Written by: Fernanda Ieffet
It’s almost finals week! Which means soon, people will be either walking around campus using every bit of energy they still have in their bodies, or hanging in there by their last straw: no in-between. I find it funny that during this time of the semester no one even looks you in the eyes. Your peers are all staring at the floor, mumbling the formulas they are desperately trying to remember on their way to their Calc exam. But among this giant group of people undergoing the same challenges and stresses, significant differences become more evident with time. Not every student is the same type of student, and everybody knows that… (or maybe that is just a me thing, which, in that case please just bear with me here for the sake of the article ok?). Since on top of my weird perceptions, I am also a literature nerd, I can’t stop my brain from taking it even further, bringing it to the next level: what if each of these types of students was a literary genre? (Yes, this is what I think of on a random Tuesday afternoon, I am a humanities major after all…)
I get that at first this may sound a little crazy; however, it starts making sense as soon as you realize there is truly no greater puzzle than the student who never shows up to class but miraculously, still manages to end the semester up with an A. Seriously, that person is basically a tourist: visits class every now and again when the weather is nice, but never makes an actual effort to be consistently present. Still though, the stars align in the universe for that lucky bastard, and they get a perfect score. If there is a random guy or girl in your Microeconomics course like that, you got yourself a Mystery genre kind of classmate. Along similar lines, but a bit of a different feeling, is the Suspense genre. Now, that is the student who remembered he had a final the morning of the date it is scheduled for. He sprints to the lecture hall, sits in the uncomfortable chair with the attached table that barely fits the piece of paper that will decide his GPA, with his borrowed number two pencil on the side, knowing very well that anything can happen in the next forty-five minutes. This type of student and the Suspense genre are one and the same, and should be listed as synonyms in the dictionary.
When it comes to Horror, we can get really creative because let’s be for real, finals week is basically a Horror miniseries in enough itself. There is, however, no student more scared than the one whose finals are all in person. Literally no one wants to be in his skin, and we get apprehensive even from just listening to him tell how it all went: that is the Horror genre type of student for sure. If we go to the polar opposite, on the other hand, we will stumble against another very popular genre: Romance. Being in the romance category is actually pretty enjoyable. That is the student everyone wished they could be during finals: the one who is in love with the act of studying. He walks from Austin to Monteith like he is about to take the test that will lead him to the successful career he already planned the next sixty years of. Every person who did not study wants to sit next to him, and every one of his professors memorize his name right on the first day of classes. To be in a better place than that, you would have to qualify for the genre of Science Fiction, but just like reading those types of books, that is no easy task (or fun one, depending on who you ask.) That student is so gifted he doesn’t even know it is finals week; he is too busy creating the next revolutionary technology out there. He makes being too smart for school be an actual thing.
Speaking of scenarios that are hard to believe, we cannot forget to mention your most likely favorite genre when you were a kid: Fantasy. There is no better structured illusion than the one the student who is currently at a D and wants to finish the semester with an A is under. Just like fairies and wizards, his case is difficult to argue for, but incredibly fascinating to listen to at the same time. And since there is no fantasy without a rocky expedition, this surely reminds us of another genre that has a special place in our hearts: Adventure. The student who purposefully procrastinates studying for his hardest final to the very last day is truly up for an adventurous night full of energy drinks and terribly made flashcards. A tiring journey against sleep and the other five chapters they still need to review by 8 AM of the next day. Lastly, we cannot complete any article on genres without including the sensitive’s top one choice: Drama. True tragedy is when you fall 2 points short from going from a B+ to an A-. Someone is going to hear your drama if you were that student: either your parents on the phone, or your professor as you ask for mercy on his grading.
Featured Image Caption: This is a perfect illustration of my emotional state during finals week