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From Hell Week to Mel Weekend

For some reason, midterms and Meliora Weekend consistently collide in the absolute worst way possible. While the weekend is supposed to be full of exciting speakers and networking opportunities, dinner with your family, and enjoyable performances, it is actually just a huge bundle of stress, compounded by the doom of midterms hovering closely by.

Last year, my Mel Weekend was bookended by midterms — I had one on each of the two days before, and one especially intimidating one the day after. This year was of a different ilk. I traversed the treacherous road of what I would call “Hell Week” and then got a veritable punch in the face from a weekend that would let me do anything but just sit down and breathe for three seconds.

Just to give you a better mental picture, it went something like this:

What my white board looked like while trying to survive "Hell Week."

What made it Hell Week was that literally everything with which I am involved decided to explode all at once. It wasn’t just that I had midterms; I also had a class presentation worth 30% of my grade, the year’s most important issue of the Campus Times, a hefty load of extra dance rehearsals to prepare for Celtic’s Mel Weekend performances, and then I still had all the weekly class assignments I have every week despite that these classes were also giving me midterms to study and worry about. It’s only natural after a week like that to want to just spend every day the following weekend detoxing. But I couldn’t. I had to do three dances in two shows virtually back-to-back, attend all of the events my family had signed up for, and try to find a way to actually spend some time with my family who had come all the way here to see me. Try to have a relaxing dinner under those pretenses.

I nearly died, but I did make it. And the key to this success is DON’T PROCRASTINATE. I am usually the queen of procrastination, trust me, but for some reason this one time I decided to actually do the mature thing and start planning ahead about a week in advance, slowly chipping away at all the academic tasks ahead of me, so that when faced with the extra dance rehearsals and long hours at the CT office, I wouldn’t be compromising my classes. So yes, Hell Week was awful, but I can’t even imagine how much more awful it would have been had I taken my usual route and put off everything until the last minute. I want to say lesson learned, but I’ll probably continue being a slave to procrastination until next year when the Mel Weekend/midterm race comes around again.

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