The best time of our lives

The alarm clock goes off. As is the case every morning, I groggily hit the snooze button, hoping in vain that the extra nine minutes of sleep I get will have a meaningful difference on my day.\nI only got two hours of sleep last night. Well, two hours and nine minutes. I had to study for a test, which kept me up late. Then, I attempted to go to bed. But because I am an insomniac, I failed to fall asleep. Once I finally did fall asleep, I awoke again because of a panic attack stemming from a dream I had about my test. Finally, as the first rays of the morning light stream through the window, my head hits the pillow.\nNow the alarm goes off for a second time, and I methodically work my way out of bed.\n"Today's gonna suck," I announce.\n"Oh come on, don't worry about it," responds my roommate. "Like they always say, this is college; it's the best time of our lives."\nAs Hollywood would have it, this is true. There are parties every night and no homework. Stress? Nonexistent. Although today is a day in which I have a midterm, work and two papers to write.\nMy midterm is an essay, meaning that I had to study a ridiculous amount of information that needed to be spewed back out in my own words. \nOne of my papers is a five-page response to a two-page short story. The other is a five-page paper assessing how the 1929 stock market crash affected the platypus pelt industry. But before I can start typing them, I have to go to work. \nOnce I finally start writing my paper, any attempts to concentrate are rendered useless because of loud noise emanating from the room next to mine. I decide to go see what is going on.\nApparently, some people have time on their hands, because the two fellows that are sitting in the room have decided to head to the mountains of Busch beer. Apparently, these men are anarchists, since they are showing blatant disregard for the law that states they must be 21 to drink a beer. As it turns out, they are watching "Sorority Girls Gone Bad" with the volume blasting.\n"Could you maybe turn that down?" I ask.\n"No," they respond.\nIntrigued, I decide to join them. I look at my watch and realize that I have wasted an hour.\nI head to the library to finish my papers so I have no distractions. As I try to open the documents, I receive a message that says "Disk has fatal error OXE339873~/&:" I repeat the process to make sure it is not lying to me. I pick up the keyboard and start beating the monitor with it. People start staring at me like this is unusual behavior. \nPerhaps all of this stress would be assuaged if IU actually had a fall break. You know, where we actually get a few days off after midterms, like they do at Penn State, Notre Dame and Purdue, among others. It's not going to destroy our education to have a few days off. Both Notre Dame and Penn State are ranked higher than IU by U.S. News & World Report.\nHaving a fall break would give us time to unwind, relax and an opportunity to go home and see our families.\nOf course, this hope is probably nothing more than a pipe dream. To think that IU would actually decide to take more than one day off per year is an absurd thought. Like the 15-keg parties on Tuesday nights they have in the movies.