As I calmly stroll about campus in the weeks approaching finals, I can't help but notice the harried nature of my schoolmates, speed walking from the library to review session after review session, their faces plagued with a mixture of sweat and panic.
I feel sorry for these people, for they obviously are not privy to the finals survival knowledge I alone seem to possess. For years I was content to hoard this knowledge for myself, receiving no small amount of pleasure from the fact that right now everyone's life sucks but mine.
Surprisingly, however, I was struck by a bolt of compassion today. I have made the decision to, for the first time ever, release my list of finals survival tactics so that the masses may revel in my stress free glory.
Jeff Beck's Finals Coping Strategies:
1. Fuck ‘em.
This is, by far, the most important thing you must keep in mind when thinking about finals. In the weeks leading up to finals, thoughts of classes, professors, papers, bestiality, and lingering assignments will have no place to creep but to the forefront of your mind. As soon as one of those despicable topics meanders its way up there, blast it away with the mental comeback "fuck ‘em." For example, here's a conversation I've had with my brain:
Brain: Dude. Bro. Fuckin' Jeff. Are you there?
Me: Where the fuck else would I be?
Brain: I dunno, you could be on shrooms or something.
Me: Yeah, well, I'm not. What do you want?
Brain: What did I want again? Umm…oh yeah!! Finals man, you gotta do somethin' about your finals.
Me: Fuck ‘em.
If you treat your brain the way I do, finals will be nothing but an unpleasant afterthought you will deal with when the time comes.
This brings me to the second item on my list, regarding what to do "when the time comes" (Beck 1).
2. Take Adderall.
I can understand why everyone thought amphetamines were the perfect drug back when they first came out in the 50's. Here's a pill. Take it and you will get smarter, work harder, lose weight, and never run out of things to say.
Due to the prevalence of Adderall across college campuses today, come finals week, you are bound to have a conversation with someone that belongs in a nightclub from the 80's. The conversation I mean, not the person.
Take Adderall, get your work done, and then just start rambling with a stranger about how intense life is. You know exactly what you're doing and where you're going. So do they, they're all coked out too. You have just made best friends, a friendship that will surely last until your buzz wears off and you have to go sleep for 20 hours to make up for the past 72 without any. Also, eat something. Even if it's just a granola bar. Three days without any food or sleep, arguably, does not leave the body in peak final taking condition. I say "arguably" because if you have any more Addy, then fuck it, keep grindin'.
While saying "fuck finals" and then taking Adderall the night before to learn three months of material in an evening should be perfect advice for everyone, I'll let you in on one final strategy in the event that those two, for some reason, don't work.
3. Cheat?
Yeah, cheating is still an option I guess. Honestly, I don't really see the point though. If you're smart enough to devise a way to sneak the answers in to an exam with you, why couldn't you have just taken some Adderall and learned them in the first place? In this day and age, you have to be a fucking genius to figure out an effective way of cheating without getting caught, and if you're a fucking genius, you probably don't even have to cheat. I suppose cheating isn't really on my list of how to deal with finals, even though it is. So, yeah, cheat if you want. Whatever, I don't care.
Now that you've had the unique opportunity to break into my mind and pillage it for finals coping material, I hope you're happy with yourself. I hope you take this knowledge and apply it to your own lives. If you do, I guarantee* that you will never stress over a test again. I want to leave you with two more important things to keep in mind if the items in the above list aren't cutting it for you:
1. No matter how bad you do on finals, it's summer in a week.
2. Fuck it, we're all gonna die anyway.
*Guarantee denotes no actual guarantee of anything.