I have recently seen references to finals all over Twitter and other social media. It is that time of year, but one I became significantly distanced from in my later years of grad school. When your only credit hours are “independent research” or “directed study” there typically aren’t large projects or papers due at the end of every semester. Instead there’s just the one very large, very stressful paper/book due at the end of your graduate career in order to finally finish and obtain a piece of paper proclaiming how awesome you are. As I scrolled through my picture hoard this week, I came across a series of pictures I took in undergrad when I was much more acquainted with the finals stress train. I followed the pictures down the rabbit hole, reminding myself of this time in my life.

The pictures I rediscovered were in their own folder titled “Reflections on Skittles…and Studying.” I was clearly committed to academics. (I jest. I was (possibly still am) a notorious workaholic). The picture that sums the 11 photos up is this one:

If I remember correctly, I took this because I thought it was an accurate representation of a college student’s study habits – a table covered in books, academic articles, and notes, laptop at hand, and strewn with candy (sour Skittles, to be specific) and highlighters. According to the photo details, it was taken on December 10, 2011. This was the fall semester of my junior year. At this point I was practically living in the student library in the geology building. I arrived at 7 am most mornings and usually left well after 9 pm; I worked for the state geological survey on the third floor; I’d moved a mini fridge into the library and kept groceries in it; I kept framed pictures of my younger siblings on top of the microwave (one time a classmate asked “who are those happy children?”); I had a key to the room, so I stored most of my books, notes, and laptop there so I wouldn’t have to pack up and cart them home every night; and I had a spot in that library that everyone in the department recognized as “my” spot. The library had a nice, big table that I could spread out on. I have fond memories of the place.

What I didn’t have memories of was what I was studying in the picture. My second major was anthropology, and based on the book I suspected I was working on a paper for one of those classes. I pulled up my undergrad transcripts (yes I have them, academic job applications sometimes ask for them) and sure enough, I had Socio-Cultural Theory that semester. I went exploring in areas of my portable hard drive I hadn’t visited in years and found my final paper for that class, handed in on December 12, two days after the above picture was taken.

The general gist of the paper was that understanding how cultures use metaphors can help better understand a particular culture quickly. I read it out of curiosity and ended up laughing at the snarky, bitter tone that occasionally rose to the surface. For instance, I titled the paper “Metaphor in Anthropology: Explained (Hopefully) in Plain English”. Clearly I fried my brain a few times researching and writing it and was resentful. Further reading fleshed out my bitter feelings. In an early paragraph I explained what a metaphor was based on a particular scholar’s work:

Fernandez has a more technical definition of metaphor which he has rewritten for different audiences and articles.  At its most basic, a metaphor is “the predication of a sign-image upon an inchoate subject” (1974:120).  Vocab time: predication means “to denote, imply, proclaim, or declare” and inchoate means “being only partly in existence or operation; imperfectly formed.”  An inchoate subject would be anything represented by a pronoun (he, she, it, they, we).  A sign-image is an object with “felt but unconceptualized meanings” (1974:120).  Fernandez is overly fond of these words.  Therefore, a metaphor imposes meaning on a subject in need of some identifying characteristic, with said identifying characteristics being specific to the object within each culture.

If you skipped that paragraph halfway through, I don’t blame you. The words “predication,” “inchoate,” and “sign-image” can be daunting, which is probably why you can see the giant dictionary open on the left-hand side of the picture (yes, I lugged that to campus from my apartment). I wasn’t exaggerating when I complained about Fernandez liking these words. A quick search had predication showing up eight times and inchoate and sign-image both showing up six times in a seven page paper. No wonder I needed those sour skittles and allowed my brain to wander for five to ten minutes to take detailed photos of my study setup.

In the process of rediscovering this long-lost paper I found another picture that brings back memories:

This photo is of my college laptop, which somehow lasted me all four years. If it wasn’t clear from the photo, I named that computer Penelope. This was taken on April 13, 2013, the spring semester of my senior year and two weeks before I presented my combination senior capstone and Honor’s thesis. I was probably under a lot of stress at this point. Given the fact that there aren’t any wear patterns in the permanent marker, I had probably just spent fifteen to twenty minutes renewing the graffiti rather than studying. I can tell from the tabletop and bucket in the upper left-hand corner that I was in the Structures classroom, and the clock visible in the lower right-hand corner of the computer screen tells me it was 10 PM. For context, April 13, 2013 was a Saturday. However, this memory is about the laptop, not my raging workaholism.

Penelope was an individual. By the time this picture was taken she was limping along. She had recently taken a three-foot tumble to a concrete floor and survived. It was a month and a half before I attended geology field school in Turkey. I had a new laptop at this point because I’d been accepted into my graduate program and my advisor’s lab always purchased a new laptop for incoming students, but I’d be damned if I flew halfway around the world with a brand new laptop and lost it, broke it, or had it stolen, so I nursed her along. Just days before I was supposed to hop on a plane I accidentally severed a wire connected to the power button. I rushed it to a computer repair shop where we learned that I could hotwire Penelope by sticking something metal between the severed wires. At the time, I constantly wore a steel cross necklace my grandmother had given me for my sixteenth birthday (somehow lost in my last move). Since it was always at hand I often used this to turn Penelope on for the duration of field school. Other commonly used items included scissors and my pocket knife.

To round out Penelope’s failing condition by July, I offer you this final photo. It’s a note I wrote in my journal when staying in an hostel in Istanbul after field school was over. I left it open on top of Penelope on my bed.

Yep, not only did I have to hotwire Penelope to turn her on, she was physically falling apart, could barely charge, and had to have percussive maintenance performed on the regular. Penelope was not stolen, though the Swedish dude we shared the room with found my note entertaining. I made it back to the U.S. with her, salvaged everything I could off her (there’s still a file on my portable hard drive named “Penelope Documents” where everything from undergrad hides), and officially retired her.

It is very easy to look back ten years and be nostalgic about undergrad, the friends I made, and all the insane things I did in the name of academics. That would be using rose-colored glasses. Mentally, I remember being stressed and I know what it’s like to be stressed (I finished a fucking Ph.D.), but I have no desire to put myself back in the mental and physical state to experience the heavy weight in my chest, the late nights and early mornings, or the looming pressure of academic excellence I constantly placed on myself. There are good memories and bad memories, but our brains often choose to remember only the former. It’s important to remember the latter as well. I remember breaking down in tears once or twice a semester; fights with roommates I wasn’t a good fit for; losing family members and friends and driving hours to funerals sometimes two states away; and being mentally drained from studying with no tangible results. One shouldn’t dwell on the bad memories, but they shouldn’t be forgotten either. They can, at the very least, engender some empathy for college kids experiencing finals today in seriously more adverse conditions than I ever did in a pre-COVID world. I had friends, the ability to hang out with said friends, professors with open doors, the ability to visit said professors in person whenever I wanted, and a campus full of activities to offer distraction when I wanted it. Students today might just have a computer screen and a bedroom. Some lucky ones might have in-person classes, but the experience is tailored for safety.

Good studying and good luck to anyone dealing with finals right now. If you found this, you’re probably taking a break, and I hope you laughed. You probably needed it.