Midterms are a whirlwind of exams and classes, and exams stuffed between those classes, eating sometimes, more exams, studying, exams. Basically, exams are the only thing on your mind. Sometimes if you have a moment of clarity though, you can realize, oops, I forgot to shower! Oops, I forgot to eat lunch! Oops, I have three weeks of laundry to do! Things like personal hygiene, care, and in general lives can very easily get put on the back burner and forgotten. Here are some common signs of midterm madness to look out for!
- Your pants start to feel tight
- Despite drinking way-higher-than-can-possibly-be-healthy-for-you levels of caffeine, you still fall asleep while studying
- You start considering other career paths
- You do everything you possibly can to feel productive that doesn’t involve studying, eg, making muffins, cleaning your fridge, etc
- You burn through a highlighter a day
- If you get to sleep in until seven, you have had a great day (My midterm average of sleep sometimes gets to be around five hours a night. It’s a vicious cycle, I don’t recommend it, it’s a terrible idea, but it happens.)
- When you dream of anatomy, histology, physiology, etc
- You wake up reciting the names of parasites you fell asleep studying
- You start making real creative foods with whatever remains in your cabinets from your last grocery store trip pre-midterms
- You spend way too much time trying to calculate the grades you need to pass
- Your wrist and hand are swollen and malformed from non-stop writing between studying and taking exams
- You don’t know what day of the week it is
- You don’t know what year it is
- You’re not even quite sure what your name is!
So, you probably get the point–midterms turn us into people we did not come to vet school intending to be, but when the smoke clears and we’ve all passed, we know that we’re taking steps toward our dreams!
