The campus is in a hush. There is no one around. Are we sleeping?
Pfft, we wish!
Main Reading Room, Shields Library
It’s finals week, folks, and sleep is the last thing on ours minds. It’s more likely that all of us are holed up in some corner of some library, study lounge, or coffee shop. For those of you who haven’t experienced a finals week in some time, allow me to refresh your memory…
Finals Week at University of California, Davis
I. There are some perks to finals week. Perks, as in, the University is aware that we will be especially ornery this week so they try to appease our crankiness with:
- Offering us half-priced coffee at the Coffee House.
- Opening the UC Davis Bookstore at 7:15AM rather than the usual 8:30 for those of us who forget to buy Scantrons and blue books (test taking materials) before their 8:00AM finals.
- Keeping the MU (Memorial Union) and Shields Library open all day and night.
- Stacking energy drinks aplenty wherever drinks are sold.
- …I can’t think of anymore.
II. The Davis sky has a sadistic tendency to finally open up its clouds and send down gloomy rain on our already-overcast souls. That’s a tad dramatic but think about it: wet socks and shoes that make slappy noises when we walk, trying to write legibly on soggy paper, having no choice but to join the masses of the weary students indoors…you get the deal.
III. Our week is perpetuated with a lot of blank staring and tears. Whether the tears are merely the biological response to yawns (the biological response to lack of sleep, might I add), or tears prompted by the sheer, overwhelming idea of relearning and regurgitating three months’ worth of classes—nobody likes tears
IV. Once finals are over, we go home. We leave behind our UCD friends and our UCD apartment with the same finals week-induced low spirit and bad attitude we spent the last seven days of fall quarter immersed in.
Common Grounds, Davis
I know my derision is pretty evident at this point, but I’d like to make the point that there is a strange sort of camaraderie that only the week of finals seems to bring out in the students and staff of UC Davis. Everyone shares and cares in their tiredness. Everyone gets to worry as a collective unit.
While “worrying in a collective unit” might not sound all that appealing, I’m sure some of you out there would share my opinion. We’re an interesting bunch when it comes to this dreaded week, not only because we all look tired as hell, but also because, for one week out of the quarter, every single one of us share a little common ground.
Jealous yet?
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