13 Ways To Study For Finals

1. Write out a to-do list on Friday evening of all the chapters you must read, assignments you must finish, and errands you must run before your final exams start in a few days. Tell yourself that you will not buckle to peer pressure and “stay in” this weekend. It’s time to act like the responsible 20-year-old you are.

2. Wake up at 2pm on Sunday to a critical mass of texts from your friends and selfies you don’t remember taking on your phone — all of which document the weekend you had originally planned to spend with your stack of notebooks and Staedtler ink pens. Hashtag, nerd.

3. Feel like a waste of a human being until you force down some coffee and a few bites of bagel. Throw your textbooks into your bag and head straight for the library, where you will feel productive just by virtue of sitting in a cubicle.

4. The library is especially social during the weekend before finals, but you tell yourself that you won’t care who sees you in your koala bear pajama bottoms and Urkel glasses at this point in this semester. But then, you notice that that cute kid in your class is sitting four cubicles away from you. He’s really cute — especially because he says pretentious things during class and was voted the MVP of your college’s intramural basketball league (B-league) this year.

5. Discreetly get up and find a cubicle in another section of the library so that he won’t accidentally catch a glimpse of you in your haggard state. You kind of hate yourself for moving, but YOLO.

6. Fall into an Internet wormhole for a solid hour. Who knew that Buzzfeed quizzes could offer so much insight into the EDM DJ most similar to you or the kind of cheese you would be if you were a cheese?

7. Open a Snapchat video from two senior friends, who are spending their Sunday evening learning the art of shot gunning. Feel bitter. Feel resentful. Briefly consider the plausibility of dropping out of school before realizing that your parents would be mad at you.

8. Finally settle into the groove of reading your notes. Go through two weeks worth of notes and decide to reward your studiousness with some TV. Now is as good a time to start watching Game of Thrones as any, right?

9. Two episodes of Game of Thrones later, decide you hate that scrawny, little boy-king — who reminds you of a cross between Draco Malfoy and Hannibal Lector. Decide, also, that you need study snacks before you continue going through the class material that you should have learned more thoroughly the first time.

10. Though there is a convenience store two blocks away from your college library, purposefully kill some extra time by heading in the opposite direction — toward the one that is twice as far away. You deserve a break, anyways.

11. Return to the library with a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos (because calories don’t, like, exist during finals) and set them on your desk as you start to work on a problem set for homework. Somehow spend ten minutes reading the first question, which is all of three sentences. Manage to finish the entire bag of Cheetos in the same span of time, but, hey, multi-tasking has to got to count for something, right?

12. On your way to wash your hands in the bathroom, you run into a friend who happens to be in one of your classes. “Hey!” she says with more enthusiasm than anyone should have right before finals. “Have you finished the final paper for our class yet?” You shake you head, no, and explain that you have more immediately pressing assignments.

13. “Uh,” she says, looking at you as though you’ve just sprouted a second head. “That paper is due…tomorrow.” You stare blankly back at her for a few seconds before fully registering what she has just said, and suddenly, your stomach starts to hurt. You quickly exit the conversation and run to the bathroom where you can plop atop a porcelain god because, wow, finals make you sick.