You know how it goes. You've got books and papers strewn all over your desk as you study for one exam. You take your test and when you come home, you push the last day's materials aside and start spreading your study materials for the next exam over your desk. And the cycle continues.
By the end of the finals, it looked like (to borrow a phrase of Pete's) my desk had vomited all over my apartment. When finals ended, I spent one whole day cleaning up the place. I cleaned the floors, the counters, the bathroom...everything. Being in a clean environment is so comforting. I'm sure that this lovely state of cleanliness will last for the next, oh, twenty-four hours.
One more final. Then I'm 75% done.
Five presentations in four days, now that's fun! It's crunch time for the second-years at Marshall right now. We just had our last week of classes, so we spent the past week running around trying to finish our group projects and presenting the results in front of our classmates. It wasn't pretty. I personally was operating one day, sometimes one half-day at a time, just trying to get everything done. If I had to compare my week to a video game, I would have to say that it wasn't like some role-playing game where you strategize and plan your moves 5 steps ahead (although that's probably what I should have done). No, this was like a shoot 'em up game where you just wait for the next target to appear and then fire away as quickly as you can. People were dropping like flies from illness and stress, and I was operating on approximately 3-4 hours of sleep a night. A couple of nights I considered taking in caffeine intravenously, but I didn't have the equipment.
Unlike my first year, where I would get together with my teammates and rehearse our presentations and all our transitions, my performances this year were all impromptu...it was nuts. Ever heard of the term verbal diarrhea? That was me. My mouth kept spouting stuff all the while my head was telling me, "Uh, you already made that point that 5 times. Move on!" I'm glad we weren't videotaped. At least, I hope we weren't. Oh, crap. Someone tell me we weren't being videotaped!
On the bright side, I went to this cool event sponsored by Anderson and Marshall featuring 85 Broads, a network for women in business. We listened to Alison Levine talk about leading an all-women team to Everest. It was very inspiring.
Also, I got a DVD player from Lu-lu! That was exciting. It was so sad having a bunch of DVDs sitting in my bookshelf with no player to watch them. I watched two movies on the DVD player last night just because I could! Don't get me wrong, I was doing homework too. Multi-tasking, you know. I can't do otherwise; I just have too much on my plate to just sit and relax. I pretty much use the television to keep me awake at this point, so I don't fall asleep at my laptop and end up with my keyboard imprinted on my face.
Just think, on Tuesday, it'll be all over. For better or for worse. But it'll be over.