Surviving the mid-semester slump

Sharpened pencils, new pens brimming with ink, empty notebooks, a couple thousand dollars worth of new textbooks … I love starting a new semester. \nHalf-eaten sandwiches rotting in the bottom of a backpack, essays written hastily with the help of Cliffs Notes and a thesaurus two hours before they're due, random syllabi floating around in a cluttered, much-doodled notebook … I detest the last few weeks of a semester.\nI had such good academic intentions this time around, as I'm sure we all did. The first few weeks in January, I was Jane Good Student, doing assignments on time and thoroughly, using the highlighters and index cards I bought, actually showering and dressing nicely before going to class, even reading ahead. I made lists. \nYes, I was a nerd, but at least I was a nerd with Dean's List potential. A dork who was in control of her life, a Goody-Two-Shoes who could actually find two shoes to wear in the morning because her closet was clean. For a few shining weeks, I went to every class, paid attention and participated. But my glory days of academia are long gone.\nLike many fellow Hoosiers, I'm wallowing around in apathy, guilt and self-pity, a state of disorganization and failure that was caused by my very own self. I'm a good girl, I am, but I'm so far down in the depths of late-semester rot I can't see the sunlight that is a 3.5. \nI've taken more than my share of "mental health days." These are the days when I skip class, swearing up and down that I'll catch up on homework, write a truly thought-provoking column (stop laughing), do laundry and unearth missing assignments from underneath my bed. Sad to say, I usually spend these days watching TV, goofing around on the Internet and plotting to order cheese sticks or Jiffy Treet or both with my roommates.\nSomewhere between the first and the seventh week of classes, many students undergo the same transformation I do, morphing from smiling students who do their homework and go to class to lazy rebels who claim they don't care anymore. \nAnd then, you wake up one day in a cold sweat, realizing that you do care. Or, at least, you wake up and realize that your parents care, or the financial aid people care, or your potential employers will care. Then, the panic sets in. Exams that were once safely four weeks away are suddenly four days away, and you haven't cracked open the textbook since … well, you haven't cracked it open yet. Papers you knew you could write in the blink of an eye turn into a big, empty, scary void in Microsoft Word that you stare at, tripping over writers' block. \nWhat to do? Go to office hours? No, too obvious … your professor might see through that, because they'll probably have to look up your name because they've never seen you before this panic attack, and then they'll see the absences you've been racking up. But don't panic, just clip out this column and tack it on your bulletin board, if you can find it. Once again, Laura will bail you out of a bad situation.\nYour academic problems can be solved with one little word: Prioritize! \nHomework, exams, term papers, laundry, going to the grocery store, calling the parents, yes, you've got a lot to do. Or do you? You don't get graded on clean clothes, do you? Didn't think so. You don't pass/fail on eating healthy, right? There you go. Mom and dad are important, but they're not due tomorrow or anything, are they? I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. Do all your "to do's" on a graded basis … if you don't get a grade for it, it's not all that important.\nFor the next few weeks, you might be slightly smelly and a bit disheveled. You might lose all contact with your friends and family. In all likelihood, you won't see a square meal. \nBut you will make it, and you will pass. If all else fails, remember the sage words of my cousin, Chris: "'D' equals 'diploma."