If I had woken up to a mound of stale pizza crusts, empty bags
of frozen potstickers and an unfamiliar body passed out on the
living room futon on any other morning, I might be in the market
for new roommates.
Or an alarm system.
But seeing as we’re smack in the middle of the finals
crush, I realized a few moments later that she was a study-group
vagabond who just forgot to go home.
That’s a little bizarre, if you think about it. It
probably wouldn’t have happened on any normal Thursday
““ “Hey, lemme crash on your futon, study-buddy”
““ but finals week is somehow a good excuse to get cozy.
Have to admit, it’s kind of sexy.
Not in the Girls-Gone-Wild kind of way, please. Save that for
spring break. (Then again, don’t. GGW is rather
passé.)
It’s because finals week is that rare occasion when we
university students actually meet with each other to think about
things. Smart things, usually. All at once. Together! The
combination of immense stress and amateur intellect is
contagious.
I love it.
It’s a creepy feeling, when the libraries start filing up,
when the Westwood coffee shops are a little busier than normal,
when students start wearing sweats to school. And then there was
the cloud of anxiety that started brewing last Wednesday.
Part of it is the collective anguish from running on three hours
of sleep, six cans of Red Bull and one scrappy page of notes
““ the unfortunate consequence of sleeping in for nine too
many weeks.
Another part is the mental torment from calculating exactly how
close to completely acing the final you’ll need to get in
order to catch an A ““ and we all inevitably underestimate.
This usually comes from the younger half of the campus; we elders
know better than to care about grades.
But we care, too. Just a little bit, maybe.
For just this one twisted week, that promise to cut back on
calories just gets blown to hell. It seems you’ll either eat
constantly, at every possible opportunity, or you just won’t
eat at all. For a week. Until it’s all over and done with.
It’s kind of sick.
You know, the swooning aside, I despise the whole arrangement
just as much as anyone else. It’s an ugly, miserable
experience. But having expected college to be something of a mega
think-tank, I still think academic pain is a little sexy.
(The ragged agony of the whole situation doesn’t hurt
either.)
It’s as if we’re experimenting with our own
intellect, sharpening it a bit, trying it out and then jabbing it
back into wherever it came from before someone sees us doing it.
Smartness isn’t always a badge of honor around here.
So, I know it’s a once-a-quarter occasion and the only
reason it happens ““ tests ““ is a less-than-romantic
one. But still. Squint your eyes, and you might catch a glimpse of
it: UCLA’s looking like a real university these days.
Then, once it’s gone, sell back those books (they never
get read afterward; who are you kidding?) and buy yourself a drink
to celebrate with the pennies you’ll get in return.
E-mail [email protected] if you’re suffering a
severe case of wanderlust, and you have a doctor’s note to
prove it.