The truth about midterms
Josefine Ulbrich
Issue date: 10/29/09 Section: Opinions
A specter is haunting Smith. It brings in its wake sleep deprivation, anxiety attacks and severe pains in places you didn't even know were part of your body. It separates you from friends and family, turns you into a candy-devouring animal and makes you seriously question your sanity.
The good news: It is not Communism. And it isn't swine flu either - at least not yet. It is the nasty thing the ignorant merely call "midterms." The Oxford English Dictionary defines midterm as "the middle of a period of office, an academic term or a pregnancy," and boy, I feel like most of us would rather be in labor for nine months than doing the two weeks of mid-semester examinations.
Allegedly invented to take the edge off finals before Winter Break, as Associate Dean of International Students and Student Affairs Hrayr Tamzarian put it in his infinite optimism, midterms just create an additional fountainhead of stress hormones. Besides the regular course load of readings, film sessions and required tutorials, students must struggle with extra amounts of studying and researching for papers.
Strangely enough, midterms are also the heyday of contradiction in the otherwise so rational Smithie's mind, best exemplified in the excessive Facebooking most of us engage in during midterms. While studying hard for her calculus exam, Maggie Zhang '13 wondered "whether integrals really [were] something she felt passionate about." We're talking contemplation of your future here, not just Smith bubble trifles.
Even if not faced with the question of future careers, midterms still mess with our minds. With probably the same amount and kind of stress, my friends Malin Stegmaier '0GR and Erina Iwasaki '0GR could not have coped in more opposite manners. One suffered from seemingly ceaseless fits of laughter due to a lack of sleep and excessive studying; the other could not stop crying in front of a tutor when faced with revising her assignment at the Jacobson Center. When I talked to them, both grinningly admitted that they didn't mind the outbursts so much as the fact that they were not able to stop.
The good news: It is not Communism. And it isn't swine flu either - at least not yet. It is the nasty thing the ignorant merely call "midterms." The Oxford English Dictionary defines midterm as "the middle of a period of office, an academic term or a pregnancy," and boy, I feel like most of us would rather be in labor for nine months than doing the two weeks of mid-semester examinations.
Allegedly invented to take the edge off finals before Winter Break, as Associate Dean of International Students and Student Affairs Hrayr Tamzarian put it in his infinite optimism, midterms just create an additional fountainhead of stress hormones. Besides the regular course load of readings, film sessions and required tutorials, students must struggle with extra amounts of studying and researching for papers.
Strangely enough, midterms are also the heyday of contradiction in the otherwise so rational Smithie's mind, best exemplified in the excessive Facebooking most of us engage in during midterms. While studying hard for her calculus exam, Maggie Zhang '13 wondered "whether integrals really [were] something she felt passionate about." We're talking contemplation of your future here, not just Smith bubble trifles.
Even if not faced with the question of future careers, midterms still mess with our minds. With probably the same amount and kind of stress, my friends Malin Stegmaier '0GR and Erina Iwasaki '0GR could not have coped in more opposite manners. One suffered from seemingly ceaseless fits of laughter due to a lack of sleep and excessive studying; the other could not stop crying in front of a tutor when faced with revising her assignment at the Jacobson Center. When I talked to them, both grinningly admitted that they didn't mind the outbursts so much as the fact that they were not able to stop.
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