COLUMN: Fighting the all-out finals week panic
The approach of finals accomplishes one thing for me: All-out panic.
There are a couple of ways for me to respond to this panic. For one, I could actually buckle down and start some last-minute studying with hopes of recovering whatever grade I can. While technically that is an option, I like to take the much more realistic choice. Whenever I get bogged down by looming projects and tests I’ve procrastinated for too long, I immediately fall back into a session of some soothing high school nostalgia.
That’s right. I slip into memories of those stress-free days where we all spent most of our teen years. I can’t vouch enough for the success such therapy can provide. After my latest bout of finals scares, I fell back on such good old high school memories as automatic ‘A’ AP classes, teacher work days, books that were free, dragging Main Street as prime weekend entertainment, bowler hat day (didn’t you have one in your high school?), a maximum of a five-page report, pep rallies, being able to be an office aid for actual school credit, and who can forget no tuition among many, many others things. Once I think back on these wonderful little high school quirks, I quickly forget about my college troubles. Then, of course, a couple hours later I get even more panicky because I lost even more time that could have been spent studying. This panic obviously instigates more high school nostalgia. It’s a beautiful cycle. I highly recommend you hop on at any time.
Now most of these memories are just that: Things of the past. But as I was talking with some friends, we realized there is one thing from high school days that we are blatantly missing here on campus, and I think there is something we can do about it. What could that possibly be? Let me ask you a simple question. How many times since you’ve been here at the university have you come out of class and seen a group of people gathered around in a circle yelling and jeering with two people in the middle duking it out? If you’re like me: zero. And yet, it was a fairly common occurrence back in high school days to catch two people going at each other like a couple of animals. My all-too-obvious suggestion then? We need more fights on campus.
As my argument needs no further convincing, the next thing you are asking yourself is what we are going to do to in order accomplish the feat of increasing our on-campus fight numbers. Well, people, it starts with us. I’ve thought about this a lot (and by a lot, I mean every time I panic over finals, so I mean a lot), and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason there aren’t as many fights on campus as there should be is because we have allowed ourselves to sink into the adult trap of “maturity.” (Another even more plausible possibility is that all the fighters from high school are now in the state penitentiary, but we’ll ignore that for now.)
Though maturity is a noble nemesis, it certainly can be defeated. Some simple things we can do to struggle against maturity are things like passing notes in class, talking about boogers, clapping or laughing when someone drops their tray in The Hub, or butting in line when buying stuff at the Bookstore.
Those seemingly simple things can go a long way toward immaturity, but as for fighting, the best thing you can do is to confront someone (regardless of whether you have been offended by them or not), set a time and location, and then meet and fight. I would not recommend relying on insults or just being a plain out jerk in order to get the job done. Most the people I knew in high school who fought would be hanging out with each other a couple hours later as if nothing had ever happened, so I think that simply setting an appointment should do the job.
While I must admit that this fighting on campus deal does tend to favor me to a great degree, since I have been looking for something to keep me distracted from finals, the nice thing about it is that public fighting is open to everyone. We can all cope with our end of semester stresses together. And if we can’t, then that is certainly something to fight about – a win-win situation. Now, while I don’t deny that I am usually a hypocrite, I am still willing do to my part in this scheme. And I can think of no better way to get started out on this proposal with a bang than challenging President Hall to a fight. Unfortunately I really wouldn’t prefer losing my first campus fight … so in that case, Craig Larsen, I’ll see you today by the tennis courts at high noon.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Any comments or fight appointments (preferably by people 100 pounds or less) can be sent to martr@cc.usu.edu.