It’s the week before finals, and the students are showing their strain. People have shorter tempers, and personal appearances are less of a priority as students flock to Middleton Library in a mad scramble to complete assignments. To help students make their final push of the semester, the University administration mandates Dead Week – a concentrated study period lasting from the Wednesday to Sunday preceding finals. According to the 2007-08 card catalog, no extracurricular activities – including sports events – may be held on or off campus, and graded course work cannot count for more than 10 percent of students’ grades, unless it was on the course syllabus within the first two weeks of the semester. When I first heard of Dead Week, I thought its name was a reflection of campus during that period. I believed that since no extracurricular activities are allowed, campus would look dead. I now know those beliefs were the folly of a young, naive freshman. Dead Week is named not as a reflection of campus life during the concentrated study time but as a truth delivered from on high. We should consider ourselves lucky if we aren’t dead by finals. It seems as if after Thanksgiving holiday ended, professors realized they needed to have something to grade students on. Knowing they cannot give us too much work during Dead Week, they have all simultaneously decided to make everything due the week before – a clever way to sidestep the pesky limitations brought by Dead Week. Because of this, I am busier than ever before. I have papers on top of projects on top of exams, and I have to complete all of these things in the next week while trying to study for upcoming finals. I always knew sanity would be a hard thing to keep hold of in college, but I never imagined it would be ripped from my desperate clutches so soon. Can’t I at least have a year before things get so hectic? As I tackle Dead Week and its many obstacles, I try to remember rapper Kanye West’s credo – “Now that don’t kill me can only make me stronger.” So I try to do as Daft Punk insists and sadly remember there is a caveat: You have to stay alive.
—-Contact Allen Womble at [email protected]