Finals, Day 1

Today was my first final, in Making Math.  After a bit of stress and three hours of knitting, I finished a pair of hyperbolic baby pants.

Three things I learned today:

1. don't procrastinate on starting, or ending, or doing in general.
2. Blackwork embroidery is really cool.  It looks the same on both sides.
3. Here's a joke:
   Three ropes are wandering in the desert and become very thirsty. They arrive in a small frontier town and go to the saloon.  The first rope goes in and asks for something to drink. The bartender says, "I'm sorry, we don't serve your kind here." The first rope leaves and tells his friend what happened.
   The second rope hopes for better luck and tries his hand at it.  He walks in and asks for a drink, but the bartender tells him, "As I told your friend, we don't serve ropes here." The second rope leaves and tells his friends about the incident.
   After two stories, the third rope is pretty sure that she would have to do something a bit different from the other two.  She gets herself tied up and ruffles herself up a bit, and walks into the bar. The bartender says, "What, are you a rope too?" To this, she says, "I'm a frayed knot."

Day 12: stress?

Current Page: 67
Target Page: beyond that
Written today: nothing
What's going on: a lot of things.

Right now, the internet on my computer is being really dumb - for some reason, it won't connect to the server, so I can only access a few academic sites as well as Facebook and Twitter and, occasionally, the NaNoWriMo site.  (This is the reason that I haven't posted for the last two days.  My apologies for that.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to write too much over the last few days. I've been involved in a lot of things with my fraternity, and I have an essay due tonight at midnight (I'm mostly done with it, which is nice).  Additionally, homework is starting to get to me, because all my professors have realized that there are about three weeks before finals (if you count the rest of this week and the two days before Thanksgiving as one whole week), and so they've all decided that now is the time to give out ALL OF THE ASSIGNMENTS.  So I had an econ test yesterday, an honors essay tonight, a Greek test on Friday (as well as a bunch of translations), and a bunch of math quizzes before finals begin.  Needless to say, there's been a lot going on.
Hopefully I'll find the time to write today and tomorrow and catch up - I'm now running behind, even on NaNo terms, so that needs to get fixed.

Finals.  Gah.
Grades.  Gah.

finals week

I know that finals week is perhaps the worst week in any college student's career - there is a lot of stress, and you realize how much you should have been studying (I know I have), and the prospect of the train/ car/ bus/ plane home is the only thing that might be getting you through the end of exams.

As this is my first finals week ever, I don't know how much I can relate to the feelings of going home being great - does the prospect get better?  Worse?  Stay the same?  Obviously, I'll be excited to go home, but the only thing I'm really stressed about is my Greek final, as Greek is my hardest subject and writing "It's all Greek to me" instead of a verb I forgot is probably going to get me a failing grade.  Of COURSE it's Greek to you, dummy! This is a Greek test! The professor will think as she grades the exams.  Sometimes I wonder how many first-semester Greek students she teaches would dare to put that on one of the tests or quizzes.
The first quiz?  Maybe.
The final?  Never.  Unless you WANT to fail.

Anyway, finals week could make a good climactic sequence for some story - the story of one's first semester of college, most likely, or the story of one's final semester.  Each are equally admirable - for one, it is the conclusion of a new adventure, and leaves the door open for many more to come; the other  is the conclusion of the adventure, and is probably a story about moving on.

You know what would be really interesting?  To write a series of eight novels (or twelve, if your school does a January term), about the eight (or twelve) semesters of college.  Same characters, different stories, and the end of each is finals week; the finals are the Final Test (see what I did there?).

Maybe I should do that.  That would be really cool.  I like that idea.
Now, if I only didn't have about five other novels going at the same time, and a Greek exam to study for, I would totally be willing to keep going with it.

But I have a Greek final to study for.  And then I'll work on it.