Dear all students who are in the same boat as us and drowning in finals, term papers, term projects and extra assignments your teachers came up with seemingly on a whim: hang in there.
We know your fingers are bleeding from typing out endless essays. We know there is dirt on your face from not having time to shower and food crusted on your sweatshirt from where you dribbled soup on it three days ago. We know your eyes are blurry because catnaps in the dark corners of the library just don’t quite cut it and your arms are weary from lugging books to and from your favourite grimy study corner.
You’re tired. You’re dirty. And your nose is bleeding because you’ve been forced to use your brain so much in the last couple of days.
But you know what?
You’re almost through.
You’ve just got a little further to go.
So smear together your nose bleed and face dirt to make some warpaint. Stand up and throw your head back in the Blue Zone in the library. Take a deep breath and feel the gentle winds of winter break on your face—you are so close you can feel it.
You’ve sacrificed mornings of sleep to research essays, turned down nights of partying to calculate homework, refused socialization to finish your readings! Don’t make all of this year’s sacrifices worthless. Instead, stand tall on the mountain of your accomplishments and feel it lift you just a little closer to your ultimate goal—being done for the break.
You’re a brilliant university student. You’ve completed upwards of 12 years of schooling for this. Feel every year of yourself pushing you forward, chanting, “go, go, go!” Growl at your textbooks, throw yourself recklessly against your mountains of assignments, roar at your essays and feverishly attack your finals!
You know this. You’ve got this. You’ve done this before (side note for first years, there are things like the writing centre and helpful librarians who can help you correctly cite your bibliographies and give you pointers on your essays if you, in fact, have not done this before). And you’re going to get through this.
This time of year is rough. Colds and the flu run rampant, stress levels have us all yelling at The Hive baristas who make us wait in line and people are so worn down it becomes the norm to see students dead asleep on the shuttle, drooling on the shoulders of their neighbours. There should be school-zone signs around campus this time of year with the way dazed students stumble into traffic to get to their next class.
This is the home stretch, the last gasp, the final kilometre. Double down, give your Facebook password to a friend and unsubscribe from Netflix—because if you get through this last stretch, this last hurdle then you’re in greener pastures my friend. You will be able to T.V. binge till you don’t know what time of day it is and laugh hysterically at any form of plans for the day.
Remember to turn off your computer and sleep, get exercise and cuddle furry friends to reduce stress levels. If you don’t have animals of your own, Concordia is bringing in therapy dogs from Dec. 2 to 8 which you can snuggle on campus to reduce your stress.
But mostly mix up some snotty, dirt-blood paint, make yourself look scary and attack them books like they ain’t been attacked before. Warrior class: student. You’ve got this.
