2.21

If you're like me (and I hope to God you're not), then you're probably entering that wonderful phase of the semester when the training wheels come off, the professors stop attempting to convince you they care, and tests seem pop up more than Ralph Nader presidency announcements (we get it, you're not dead yet. But seriously Ralph: it's hard to be an anti-establishment candidate if you are, essentially, the established anti-establishment candidate, you feel me?).

Yes, my fellow embattled peers, it is midterm season. Like election season, wabbit season, and hockey season, most people would rather hide their heads in the sand and ignore the entire business. That's great for them, if they have, like, jobs, with, like, money and stuff. But we don't have that luxury! No. Entire futures can rest upon whether or not you can correctly identify the speaker, significance, and latent homosexual undertones of a select passage from Sir Baltimore Fennimere's Victorian bestseller "The Tube Socks of Lady Beatrice." Heaven help the undergrad who seeks education in lieu of study guides.

Midterms are strange beasts. They combine all the stress (and most of the weight) of finals without the blessed consolation of never, ever, ever having to think about the class again. Seriously, what's the point of a test if you can't forget everything it covers the minute after it's over? It is beyond me, I assure you.

But midterms are what they are, so one best learn how to deal with them instead of doing something crazy like changing majors, having a stroke, or meticulously cutting off strands of your roommate's hair while he sleeps with the utmost caution, saving them in your files for the day when your Frankenstein will need a toupe pre-murderous rampage. Not that I've ever thought about that or anything. Ever. At all. (But seriously, what kind of self-respecting monster would go about maiming and pillaging bald? It's just not how these things are done!).

So, having gone through my fair share of midterms, I thought I'd try to devise some possible ways to work off steam to get you through the coming weeks.

1. Think of Better Things To Come: Spring Break. Summer Break. Christmas. Graduation. Increasing post-college isolation followed by years of regret and nostalgia. The cold, yet firm grip of a merciless death. All of these will come to pass, eventually. The midterm is just another incident in the long, dreary funeral dirge we call life. It's hardly the end of the world. (Although that'll happen too, sooner or later)

2. Get a Terminal Illness: Few things can cause you to reevaluate your priorities than your own impending demise. Your midterm goes from priority number one to number 438 on your list of "Things I will do ironically and then laugh at once dead." If you don't believe in an afterlife, then you'll be too busy venting your unceasing existential rage at a callous, unfeeling universe to remember the revolutionary business model of Reginald P. Luorline III, esq. in the real estate market of 1923 L.A. for Intro to Crapology 293.

3: Hunt the Homeless: The recent bipolar nature of the weather has drastically affected the local hobo populations. The weather fluctuations have lowered their natural defenses, leaving them confused, dazed, and ripe for the culling. If you're the type of person who constantly fears explosions of hobo populations and their inevitable uprising, then this is the perfect time to let off some steam and destroy those who are human by the definitions of science alone. Studying can wait. The hobo-science alliance must be stopped! And now, my friends, is the time to do it.

4. Wears Pants: AT YOUR OWN PERIL.

Seriously. Study for the damn midterm, already!