Students should look ahead to end of finals

Prep week, also known as "dead week," has finally arrived, and the spring 2000 semester is nearly complete. For students, the anxiety over final exams looms closely overhead. This week, students will bear the immense burdens of exam preparation as well as trying to finish projects. They must combat the stress that often threatens to fracture, if only temporarily, their sanity.

The scenarios that could just as easily be portrayed in a television after-school special actually happen. Students lose their health. They have breakdowns. Sometimes they contemplate suicide. All these things claim a part of college life merely because of a fixation on the fear of failure. It's needless.

The best way to look at finals week is by focusing on the word itself. "Final" means the end — the end of the stress — the end of that one unbearably terrible class — the end of another year that separates you from the rest of your "real" life.

But it's also the start of something else, something better. It marks weeks of relaxation and time spent with those we love. For many of us, it is a return to what we've spent nine months hoping to become — happy, stress free and satisfied with life.

The days will stretch out before us and dates will lose their significance. The sun will linger overhead, and the pervasive smell of cut grass will be second only to that of neighborhood barbecues. It's a long time until August. What will you do to enjoy it?

Those with internships will not only be working to benefit their futures, they will be getting paid for it. And more so, it will be strictly 9 to 5. After you step from the doors of your job, your time will belong to no one else. The rest of the day will be yours, and you'll have money to enjoy it with.

The importance of doing well on exams, especially finals, is so ingrained within our consciousness that it needs not to be written. But the importance on relaxing during this time — of making sure that we are OK — is not. We sacrifice ourselves too readily for the benefit of the Scantron god.

During this potentially destructive week, remember what all this preparation is really for — supreme gratification when you finally leave school for good. That day will come.

Students should look ahead to end of finals

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