Exactly two weeks and 25 minutes from the moment I am banging out this last column — Dec. 20, 6 p.m., for those of you who aren't reading over my shoulder — I'll be passing in my last final paper and packing up for a relaxing winter break of family, friends and skiing. I am quite literally giddy with anticipation for the opportunity to put my brain on power−save mode and render physiological processes such as breathing, eating and maintaining homeostasis the most cognitively demanding tasks that I need to tackle for a month. Hallelujah, mazeltov and happy f−−−ing New Year to that.
But unfortunately, before that can happen, the amount of work I need to do is somewhere between hilarious and painful. Let's face it: juggling two challenging final papers and two exams while defending a winning streak in Words With Friends is mentally exhausting. The countless weekends spent — note: not wasted — playing Bananagrams, rollerblading the Freedom Trail and generally doing nothing are finally catching up to me in the worst of ways. And now it's crunch time.
Anyway, enough about finals. For lack of any great test−taking wisdom to impart, I guess I'll wrap up with this: a quick list of what I've learned this semester.
Facebook statuses about how you pulled a really sweet all−nighter and made the deadline just in time don't make you look cool.
Talking about going to the gym happens approximately twice as often as going to the gym, and this discrepancy increases the farther you live from said gym.
It's almost impossible to submit a column for the Daily on time.
At 5 a.m. in the fall, the entire campus is covered in sprinklers.
An uphiller dating a downhiller constitutes a long−distance relationship.
The changing colored lights in Hotung cause weird hallucinations when the viewer is overtired.
In each class there will be one kid who always insists on interjecting annoying comments whenever the professor stops talking. Everyone else in the class dreams of punching this kid.
Sometimes the bananas in Dewick are small and perfect. And sometimes they are disgustingly, hilariously, frighteningly large.
I'm convinced that at least 10 people from my freshman floor transferred, dropped out or disappeared. This is a common side effect of sophomore year.
The thrill of trick−turning a cake from Hodgdon plummets after September of freshman year.
Going to Health Service for even the most minor ailment always results in a horrifyingly exorbitant bill.
You know your professor is a great lecturer if attendance on a class day is over 80 percent of attendance on an exam day.
No matter how long you've been waiting outside a dorm, as soon as you call a friend to let you in, some rando will come first.
No one is judging you if you sit in the dining hall alone on a weekday.
However, if you sit alone taking up a big table in the library during finals week, everyone will judge you and possibly hurt you.
You can walk in late and undetected to any lecture class unless it's in Braker 001, because the door is in the front.
Exactly zero people care about anything written on Dabbut.com.
While the weeks seem to drag on forever, the years are flying by. Let's enjoy them while we can.
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Chelsea Stevens is a sophomore majoring in psychology. She can be reached at Chelsea.Stevens@tufts.edu.
