Signs of a Mid-Semester Slump
You thought that the third week of the semester when all of your classes were synced up with tests and assignments like the menstrual cycles in a sorority house was bad. But that was before midterms week. You’re currently on your seventh mental-breakdown while running on six hours of sleep…from two days ago. Year after year we tell ourselves, “This year’ll be different,” claiming that we won’t cram; that we’ll plan ahead, meet our goals, and go to every one of our classes. But here we are, lowering expectations, pulling all-nighters and skipping morning classes to study for this afternoon’s exam. The only thing that’s more predictable than the deterioration of a college student’s semester is a basic bitch’s Halloween costume. I’m a mouse, DUH. Much like your allowance/paycheck, you’re spending all of your energy in one place. You keep telling yourself it’s worth it and in the days following your midterms, you’ll give yourself a few days off to drain your system of all the caffeine and Adderall you pumped into it to study for midterms.
This, my friends, is the mid-semester slump.
You’ve considered switching career paths every time you have a test or assignment due.
It’s still unclear how astronomy, philosophy, and all the electives we take to fulfill required credits relate to literally ANYTHING you want to pursue a career in. Yet somehow, it’s your hardest class. You imagine future employers reviewing your resume and despite everything you have to offer, they simply cannot offer you a job because of your final grade in earth science. You’ll be unemployed living in your parents’ basement forever because you didn’t know the difference between a sedimentary and igneous rock. *Cue snickering earth science majors.*
Your list of priorities undergoes a slight renovation.
It seems as if there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to do everything, so you often face having to make a decision. Shower or sleep? Netflix or sleep? Class or sleep? Human interaction or sleep? Your life motto is “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” and this time of year has you feeling no less than a cast member of “The Walking Dead.” Sleep is a rarity that seldom presents itself, so when the opportunity arises you cease that shit, regardless of where you are at the time. We all wake up in a cubicle in Bird Library in a puddle of drool, maybe with a librarian checking our pulse, at some time.
Falsified confidence in academic abilities.
Even though you’ve learned from experience that multi-tasking never was, and never will be, your strong suit, you continue to work on 3 assignments at once while taking notes on the lecture you’re currently sitting in, and still maintaining a strong social media presence as you stalk your ex on Facebook. If you can Netflix n’ chill at the same time, you can do anything at the same time. However, you’re still failing 6 classes even though you’re only enrolled in 5.
Motivation levels drop faster than the temperature.
The promise you made to yourself to put visible effort into your appearance this year starts to fall through. Your hopes for a good semester collapse faster than the chair you're sitting in, being that you haven’t gone to the gym since it was shorts weather, a.k.a. the last time you shaved your legs.
Cuffing season is no more than a myth.
You went into hibernation to study, which morphed into confinement due to the flu. It’s been quite a while since you last left your bed, but in that short amount of time it seems as if everybody received a memo of some sort regarding “cuffing season.” So now you’re so single that you don’t even have anybody to drunk text at 2 a.m.