As midterms roll around, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with some fellow students about the horrible feelings of stress that come with big, important exams. As we sat around a table in a frozen yogurt shop during finals week, the conversation turned to how stressful that time of the semester can be. I'm pretty open with my friends, so I went out on a limb and asked them if they stressed out the same way I did.
I forget my exact wording, but I talked about how at a certain point, an urge occurs to inflict bodily harm upon oneself just to get out of the semester. I'd never acted on these thoughts, but as finals and procrastination pile up, I admitted that these easy ways out start looking a little better than the alternative. I wasn't surprised that they understood; that's kinda what friends do.
I was surprised that they agreed wholeheartedly, resulting in a talk about all the different things one might do to get out of the responsibility of a semester at school. Included were:
- get hit by a vehicle or in some other way suffer a serious injury
- develop a drug addiction / spend semester in rehab
- get pregnant (probably give baby away)
- contract a temporarily debilitating disease (ex. mono)
- break a limb
- get sent to an asylum
- enlist
- go hobo
- go into an illegal business (drugs, etc.)
Of course, we would never actually do these things just to get out of finals, but the thoughts do occur. If you have any other examples of things you've thought of to get out of your responsibilities for a while, please post them in the comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment