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| Finals |
| Back in college, I took a psychology class taught by a guy named Steve. He allowed students who had above a ninety-five percent average to be exempt from his final exam. I was one of those students. He jokingly remarked that I could still come and take the exam if I wanted to. And I did. Want to. But I didn't want to look silly. Not taking that exam was anticlimactic for me. There was no final, just a gradual drift into the next semester. |
| Since then, I have had a lot of students pass through my various classrooms. |
| Each and every student was different and a learning experience for me, but in the end, each and every student was also exactly the same. |
| Towards finals time, all students, good and bad, scholars and slackers, start to freak-out just a little bit. |
| Of course, the method and form of the freak-out is always different, but it amounts to the same thing. |
| Human beings take issue with finality, with the ending of things. |
| What should we study? What's going to be on the test? How long will it take? How much is it worth? Will there be extra credit? Are there any multiple-choice questions? No? Come on, Miss. Give us a break. |
| Finals are a rite of passage, a gateway from one level to the next, one way of defining oneself to another. And perhaps this is what we take issue with. |
| These are moments that redefine us—finals, graduation, marriage, parenthood—they are all expected and anticipated, but still sudden. |
| In a moment, a major change has occurred and we are no longer who we used to be. |
| I'm sure that Steve thought he was doing us a favor, but at least for me, he took away that conscious shift that told me, "This is it," "It's over," "Time to move on." |
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