The notions of sleep are haunting our dreams, and the smell of bacon taunts stomach boners rock hard. Library study rooms have a waiting list, and people are insisting they actually want to pay $4 for coffee. Young children being wheeled around campus in wagons cry at the sight of collegiate students crying in the fetal position during common hour. Potheads are chilling out in the intramural fields with shirts that say “Keep Calm and Carry On,” because that is what they do. The campus gym is offering a special yoga class for your hands. Why is their madness going on in the midst of classes beginning to escort their learning spaces outside, frisbees being tossed around, and sundresses beginning to sprout and blossom? Before there can be binge-drinking in Cancun, there are mid-terms.
Taking entire class periods in lieu of an exam cumulative of your semester thus far when the sun is shining outside is proof that all Hofstra students are absolutely out of their respective minds. You may say, “But, Max! Mid-terms are part of our education!” to which I may say, “Do you want to go to Jones Beach?” No matter how much the piece of paper that we are working for costs, what we are really paying $40,000+ a year for is mental anguish and insanity. If you are paying this much for an education, can you at least ditch the California Pizza Kitchen? How am I supposed to concentrate on studying when there is “California-style” pizza being served at a college in New York, where good pizza actually exists? Maybe I should have gone to school in California where I can be served a New-York version of corn dirt or yeast pizza, or whatever those vegan communists eat over there in Hollywood.
It is always very hard to get down on my books, lay them down, by the fire, and study every inch of them until every turn of the page makes the text moan in ecstasy. I find myself in need of ignoring friends, family, locking my dorm room, making my roommate sleep at his girlfriend, because for Christs’ sake, she has a single, and staring at a book until my eyes bleed. Studying for midterms becomes a lot like becoming something inhumane/non-human. Whichever you prefer, it means the same. You find yourself scrambling for food like some sort of vulture, but you have to ignore all those stands in the SC Atrium asking for donations to help cure cancer, sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, AIDS, or the invisible children that some thirty minute short film on Youtube (that I did not see) is about.
For one, I do not have any extra money to donate to twenty causes a week. That is my overpriced coffee money you are using to send impoverished African children to school. How can I think about them when my sources and thesis are due Monday? For students that wish to perform well and impress on their mid-term exams, you must become animals. Stop shaving! That wastes time. You’re walking and cognitive enough to use a razor? Use that time to memorize your French vocab., because let’s face it. You will never learn to speak French fluently no matter how sexy it is when Bradley Cooper does it.
Get through this so you can start enjoying Springtime the right way: shirtless on a beach regardless of your personal gender. Become the animal you can be. Beast mode engaged!
