Here we are, going into another finals week. Everybody's stressing out and becoming short tempered. Some schools (like my sister's) have already had finals, and those students are out for Christmas break right now. Everyone has their pre-final rituals, but the interesting stuff is what always occurs around finals without anyone planning on it.
1st: Relationships spring out of nowhere.
People who have had mild crushes on other people for the enitre semester suddenly decide that if they don't act on that crush immediately, they'll never have the chance (probably a result of that pre-finals stress), so they take that leap and in turn cause both themselves, those around them, and the object of the crush even more stress to go with the normal finals related stress.
2nd: People suddenly end relationships and drop commitments.
Couples that everyone thought would be together forever suddenly choose to be single again, and the most involved students suddenly quit everything and become recluses. While the point of this is to alleviate stress, it usually only causes more stress, because there's nothing worse than having no excuse for a study break.
3rd: Procrastination hits an all-time high.
Very little that is productive gets accomplished before finals week. Sure there is procrastination before finals, but not at a finals week level. People find every excuse possible for not doing what needs to be done, studying, papers, or whatever. You're looking at one of my procrastination projects right now.
4th: And finally (for this list) tempers get very short.
While this is the time of the semester where people want to spend time together right before that month long (at least here) Christmas break, it is also a time when everyone (especially me) seems to get extremely tempramental to the point of wanting to spend a lot of time alone (which is also what I'm doing right now). Of course this tendency to avoid people while wanting to spend time with them adds more stress, for everyone. It's all one vicious circle.
