Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: A finals week prayer
Eleazar Wheelock, Daniel Webster, Dr. Seuss and Keggy,
Are you there, guys? It’s us, Dartmouth.
We know it’s not your fault that terms are 10 weeks long and we only have like a week and a half to recover from Green Key and midterms week round two before finals roll around. And it’s not your fault that we are forced to use Memorial Day as a day of reading period, even though everybody knows it’s a federal holiday. Who thought it was okay to mess with a day when we were supposed to celebrate the land of the grill and the home of the Keystone?
Come on. We don’t know about you, powers-that-be, but we kind of like having lives outside of Baker-Berry Library. That’s why we chose Dartmouth, not Harvard University, are we right?! And if we have to spend these couple of days all stressed out with only chicken salad sandwiches from Novack Cafe to sustain us, we at least have a few requests.
1. Please make sure that King Arthur Flour doesn’t run out of everything except peanut butter and marshmallow and roasted asparagus sandwiches by 11 a.m. And can you get them to stop trying to sell us that horseradish and bleu cheese spread? Can you guys think of anybody who likes that stuff? Not us.
2. Please give us the self-control to keep from making miserable Twitter and Facebook posts about how we have #3moredays of #finalsweek. Nobody needs to see that.
3. How come alumni are donating bajillions of dollars for the new Black Family Visual Arts Center and the Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, but you guys can’t pull some strings and see to it that all the chairs in the library are rolly ones? I mean, think about the last time somebody saw a rolly chair and thought to themselves, “Hmm, I’d really rather sit in a wooden one.” That’s right – it’s never happened.
4. Please make sure we hit our non-recording option limits and that we get at least the median grade. Please.
5. Maybe install some showers in the library. Apparently personal hygiene is one of the first things to go when our GPAs are on the line.
6. Please make sure our alarms go off.
7. Watch over us as we pump our systems full of caffeine and guanine and taurine and Adderall and make sure our hearts don’t explode. Also, please gird our livers for when we are finished with finals. We want to enjoy Senior Week, not spend it in Dick’s House like a Fall term freshman.
8. If we have one of those finals where we get to prepare six essays and draw two out of a hat, please let it be the two that we actually did research for.
9. Please save us a seat in the library. And please let it not be next to someone who has seventy thousand handouts that get all up in our personal space.
10. Please smite down anybody who has loud personal conversations right next to us. You slayed a member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity last night? Sweet. Moving on.
Well, that’s all we can think of. We promise next term will be different. We promise to start eating right and to go to all our classes and never sleep in late ever again. Seriously. We swear.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. In Carol Folt’s name we pray. Amen.