COLUMNS
B’s Unclassified Finals Survival Guide: Pandemic Style Guaranteed to work or your tuition back! work done at school or at home, so just go for the home cooking and the constant sound of dogs barking, maybe even mix in a little family animosity for good measure. There’s a pandemic on, right?
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ovely readers, students, and caffeine addicts, the time is fast approaching when that titan presents itself. The daunting college final. For some, it manifests as a beastly paper that one has totally been working on all semester and definitely didn’t write last night. For some, it is a nightmarish exam that steals first your sleep and then your soul, and probably your cat too. For the freshmen, it is their first taste of the True College Experience (patent pending,) for the war-weary veterans, it is a grim reminder that you won’t ever actually need half of this in the real world. But fear not. This guide will help you survive the incoming wave of despair, colored a weird shade of red and wearing a face mask because of the fabulous addition of a pandemic! Follow these steps and you are guaranteed to succeed in taking that virtual three-hour final! 1. Move back home: Look, nobody wants to admit that they live at home with mom and pops. You won’t get any Boris A. Abreu is a graduate student pursuing a Master of International Policy. He is Editorin-Chief of The Arch Conservative. WINTER 2020
2. Break out your baby blanket: Nobody is gonna see you holding that tatty old thing when all they get is a headshot live feed of you over Zoom. It holds the memories of times long gone and when your only homework was the minute math sheets, not 25 page papers on art history. Just do it, and maybe finally wash that red soda stain out of it? 3. Buy a better internet service: Hey, you and your roommates pay for the super reliable net service that you got the offer for in the mail right? The one that cuts out for no apparent reason and makes your professor sound like a robot? Better upgrade it to something other than McDonalds internet before you disconnect during that ELC exam and you’re back to square one. 4. Drastically increase caffeine intake: The pandemic has made all of us homebodies, whether we like it or not. As students, we already consume ridiculous amounts of the stuff. Just take the plunge, maybe switch out your coffee for some pre-workout or even better yet, some delicious Red Bull. It doesn’t work until you can start to see noises. 5. Mend family relations: Nobody likes to admit that their relationship is perfect with their family. Let’s say we’ve moved back home (like recommended in step one!) and we want to make sure our finals go smoothly as possible. Make sure you mend relations with your kid siblings, lest they feel vengeful and decide to unplug the router on you while you’re taking an exam because you said no TikToks during it.
6. Upgrade your streaming services: in today’s society of self-gratification for doing the absolute bare minimum, like playing 4 hours of Netflix as a reward for writing a single page, might as well go the full kit and upgrade your Disney Plus, your Prime Video, even the failed Quibi deserves an upgrade. That way you have a bevy of TV shows to couple with your existential angst. 7. Bring your pillow everywhere: Chances are, if you’re taking a final online from the comfort of the dorm room you haven’t left in roughly 6 months (are you okay,) then you’ve found creative places to sleep in your twin bed. But have you considered just moving the bed to the MLC? The wood desks are murderous on the neck and the soft pillow will hide your jubilation when you finally finish stress-writing that paper at 2:30 am. 8. Boxing gloves: Let’s say you didn’t choose to move home after class changes to all virtual. Let’s say you and your buds want to engage in a socially-distanced study hour at one of the MLC’s hottest commodities, the study room. You’d best bring a pair of heavy weight bruisers with you. We engage in fisticuffs for study rooms. The scars from exams past aren’t just mental. If you follow at least some of these 8 incredibly useful steps, there is a high chance you pass these winter virtual finals by a margin considerably more than the “skin of your teeth!” Margins this year are thinner than they’ve ever been, and we wanted to update our beloved original finals study guide to one that is more adapted for the land of Zoom. Best of luck, beloved readers, and may your WiFi be strong and your face mask sturdy! b
The Arch Conservative / 17
