It’s that time of the year again — and I’m not talking about Etown monsoon season. There is another storm that hangs over the campus, causing tears and sweat to fall like rain from students’ faces. Forcing people to stay inside and hit the books. Darkening the usually vibrant Etown climate. It’s midterm season.
Some of you might not have any midterms. If you’re midterm-free, rejoice in the fact that you have more time to sleep and socialize than your friends who are up to their ears in exams. But, do consider bringing those friends cookies during these tumultuous times.
Midterms are stressful — there’s no way around that. The reason midterms make so many students anxious is because they often count for a healthy portion of overall class grades. Ten percent of the grade is typically the minimum that I have seen. We usually end up telling ourselves, “I’m done for if I bomb this midterm.” Even if you excel at the homework assignments, class projects and lengthy papers, but you just can’t seem to slug through the tests, there seems to be no salvation. And halfway through the semester, a poor midterm grade can be quite discouraging.
Midterms feel like the last round of poker. You and your friends all put in five dollars at the beginning of the night, and you’ve done a considerable job at winning back more than you put in. The pile of chips in front of you towers over your friends’, reaching for the sky as a sign of your poker prowess. You’re just that good. But your friends play with some crazy house rules — during the last round, all betting has to be in 50-cent increments. You think your hand is solid, and you put a lot of effort into bringing home your precious milk money. Suddenly, you realize that regardless of how well you have played throughout the night, if you botch this final bid, your work will be almost for naught. Instead of dominating the table as you had been, you might walk home with a measly three dollars, all because of one bid that apparently mattered more than the rest. Tough luck.
Midterms feel like rock climbing without a harness. With your iron grip, you scale the towering cliff in front of you. Your handhold and foothold choices are on point — there’s no stopping you. You feel like a superhero. If Batman and Spiderman had a child, you would be that child, ignoring the biological impossibilities of that situation. Then you see a large ledge directly above you, where you can finally rest after your lengthy climb. The only handhold, however, is a flimsy-looking tree branch jutting out from the cliff face. You have no choice but to keep going, but everything comes down to this questionable piece of greenery. It’s too late to turn back. It’s too late to wonder if you shouldn’t have eaten that muffin at the bottom of the wall, which actually tasted pretty foul in retrospect. Your overall successful climb can come to a terrifying close if that tree branch doesn’t feel like cooperating.
Midterms feel like that treacherous last round of Mario Kart. You and your main man, Yoshi, have navigated every obstacle with relative ease. You’ve hurled red shells at your fellow racers, picked out the fake item boxes from the real ones and only ended up hitting two bananas so far. Nice. After going back and forth with your friends a couple times, you’ve secured the coveted first place position. See you at the finish line, Donkey Kong. Hasta la vista, Wario … Wait, who the heck plays as Wario, anyway? But then, Toad — that blasted, rascally little mushroom, Toad — whips a winged shell your way. His vicious weapon hones in on whoever is in first place, which happens to be you. Who cares if Donkey Kong is only a couple feet behind you? You had this race. But one shell just ruined it for you. Thanks, Toad.
It really bites to know that one exam can ruin your class grade, even if you have been beasting every other assignment that you’ve received. Not everyone is a good test-taker. Life — fair or not — often comes down to singular important moments or occurrences. So you lost all of your chips in poker. You’ll be back with a vengeance after your next payday. The tree branch snapped. As famous author Ray Bradbury puts it, sometimes you have to “jump off the cliff and learn how to make wings on the way down.” Stupid Donkey Kong won the race. He’ll be receiving a hefty helping of red shells to the rear end next race.
We love to complain about midterms, or even exams in general. No one enjoys them. It’s easy to get carried away and lament about how unfair they are. And, in many ways, it isn’t fair that several sheets of paper or one blue book can be such a death sentence. But we have to buckle down, take the darned tests and accept the results. Then figure out where to go or what to do from there. The hardest test of all is simply staying positive. Let’s all shoot for a passing grade in that department.
