Illustration by Holly Randall

Question: How do you cram the breadth and depth of a semester's worth of class into the one fateful week before finals?

Answer: Not very easily.

Most likely, for quite a few of you out there, this week has been a blur of memorizing facts and figures that should have been long ago stored into your cranium.

True, there are probably some serious and diligent Wildcats who have kept up with their reading, gone to office hours or actually attended class.

There are among us those academic titans who have not fallen prey to the dark mistress of procrastination.

However, the rest of us weak-willed mortals will be forced to pick up the slack that we so innocently thought we could forego in favor of hosting late-night Chappelle show marathons or honing the skills to be the best little Super Mario Smash Brothers player ever.

Yet this race toward finals invariably results in crushing the spirit and morale for those on campus, what with the flurry of activity and stress levels reaching breaking point.

With many a heavy head trying to ward off academic probation, to keep that much-needed scholarship or, at the very least, earn better grades than the football team students, students aren't the carefree youngsters who started off the beginning of the semester.

In their stead, we have the living dead, beings sustained only by massive amounts of caffeine and vending machine fodder.

Besides being a hectic and busy time, finals also present some of the most profound examples of the utter sinfulness of mankind.

Susan Bonicillo Columnist

I've never seen more instances of pure evil than when deadlines loom, papers remain undone and chapters unread.

Case in point: the epic struggle for a much-needed computer. Any computer. Even one where the "F" button is missing and the space bar is sort of jiggly.

I had such an experience the other day while roaming through the Integrated Learning Center.

You've all been there before. The desperate hunt for a computer.

If there were a god of the computer world, I would sacrifice my firstborn child (heaven forbid I am to reproduce) just to be in front of a monitor's flickering, mechanistic glow.

You scan the room with the alertness and stealth of a cat hunting a poor, scared little mouse. Again and again what you think is an open computer is only a cruel illusion. "Does Not Work" signs continually mock your sad state.

Other times, you stumble over an open computer only to find out that someone, though nowhere to be seen, has claimed it by right of an empty coffee cup.

However, the unwritten rules of the ILC protect the ownership of this long forgotten person, so you move on.

Finally, you think you've scored access to the wonders of the Internet and all the notes it lovingly provides as another weary student like yourself gets up from the computer, eyes bloodshot and hair mussed.

Then, out of nowhere, some small, unintimidating looking waif of a girl makes a Heisman-worthy scramble, body-checking you in the process.

She then sits down and logs on to AOL where she proceeds to IM every single person she's ever met in her entire life.

It's times like these that I wish stoning was still an acceptable form of punishment.

With circumstances being as they are, it's hard not to feel some sort of melancholy.

Usually, this sadness hits you at the worst possible time. It's the kind of blue feeling that strikes at 3 in the morning, when motivation and coherent thought have all but left.

It's all you can do to curl into the fetal position on the floor and hope for the sweet release of death.

Unfortunately, tests still need to be taken and lab results still need to be fabricated.

But please, everyone, try to be a little nicer.

We're all in the same boat, just one step from snapping completely and going on a homicidal rampage because Webmail just had to go down, leaving you desperately hunting for a study guide.

So, with this rather stressful week ahead, remember to bring some goodwill to others.

For everyone who loves a good online chess game, save it for a different time when term papers aren't looming for the rest of us.

And, to the chronically masturbating hobos that live on the fourth floor, please, try to keep any and all sounds to a dull roar.

We're almost to the end, working our tails off in hopes of the reward of a peaceful summer while secretly yearning for those two words that every student wants to hear: group test.

Susan Bonicillo dearly apologizes to all her professors for falling asleep in just about every class she's registered for. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.