Final Stretch

It’s that time of the year. The time of the year that all five class projects are due, you’re out of money, finals are around the corner and your teacher just assigned another new story due the week before finals. Everything is going wrong and there’s a pile of stuff to do that could probably reach the roof if everything wasn’t digital. Thank god for computers right?

It’s the end of the semester and there are 10,000 things to do and there are not 10,000 hours left in this semester. Time is dwindling; sweat is staining that t-shirt you’ve been wearing all week, and you’re seriously considering bringing a sleeping bag and mini fridge to the library, does my tuition count as rent if they ask me to leave?

If you’re like me, you have taken on multiple jobs, student orgs, all while trying to maintain that 3.5 GPA that you have slowly killed yourself for. I may die six years early but at least my GPA is high right?

This semester, if you’re like me, may have made you question your sanity and whether or not working at a McDonald’s for the rest of your life would really be so bad. I have stared at myself in the mirror so many times wondering if anyone else could tell that my brain was malfunctioning, if they could see the tears I was holding behind my eyes while trying to learn a foreign language. I wondered if the people could tell that I’d only slept three hours the night before, or if they could tell that I spent my free time Googling one-way flights out of the country to a land where I could hide from my Spanish test. I wondered if the people around me could feel the stress waves radiating from my arms and scalp. I wondered if people around me could tell that I may have been slowly loosing my mind when I stopped walking one day and had to check my phone to see what day it was, I had literally no idea what day it was.

This semester, after hours of homework, countless flashcards, gallons of coffee, gallons of tears, hours of procrastination, and countless mental breakdowns is coming to an end. This semester that I really thought would kill my spirit is over. We made it. We have made it this far, we made it to that last homestretch where you round the corner and you can see your coach down at the end of the track screaming “RUN RUN YOU CAN DO THIS. RUUUUNNNN.” (Little track metaphor for ya? Any runners out there?) You can see your coach screaming at you and everything in you shifts, you can see the end and you open up your stride and you run. You run your little heart out and you make it to the finish line. You did it; sure you can’t breath and your ankle may be broken, but you did it. And we are all standing there cheering for you, because you did it, and we are so proud of you. Something in you wells up and you throw your head back and throw your arms in the air.

Hang in there guys. Don’t give up, don’t you dare give up! You are so close, you got this, this race, and these tests have nothing on you!