Dead Week murdered

The earth-shattering truth I'm about to reveal to you, dear reader, will overwhelm you with grief; your soul will dry out and crumble into thousands of colored crumbs, like Playdough left baking on the back seat of mom's Ford Explorer. The weak of heart are advised to stop here: go read the "Blender Kitty" cartoon, or "Help Me, Harlan!" until you're ready to learn what God himself is afraid to know.\nLadies and gentlemen, at exactly 8 a.m. this past Monday morning, Dead Week, was pronounced dead. Mr. Week's body was found partially mutilated in the attic of his Varsity Villas apartment, having gone missing around Spring Break. Crime scene investigators are on the case and conducting interviews with Week's friends and neighbors. The investigation is expected to continue throughout Little 500 but preliminary findings suggest that Week was murdered by a rogue group of highly trained professional killers known as P.R.O.F.S. IUPD considers the unit to be extremely dangerous, and advises students to stay off campus and away from classrooms.\nDead Week, or "DW," as he liked to be called was a good, honorable man whose only wish in life was that students of all races, genders and creeds would be free from their usual obligations for a few short days right as the weather was getting nice again. But the "People's Hero" was cut down in his prime by his enemies, those selfish and heartless monsters who have assigned more work than can possibly be considered humane. (The names of the heartless, selfish monsters will not be printed in order to protect the innocent: my GPA.)\nNo, that's not true. But there's no reason to keep pretending that Dead Week is any easier than a regular week, in fact, it's a lot more hectic. The rules say that a professor needs to give notice of any assignment due this week more than seven days in advance, so they assign work on the syllabus assuming that the first day of class is adequate warning. But the work isn't really assigned that early, is it? Sure it's on the syllabus, but the students don't actually receive the prompt until much later. By then it's too late for students to ask their professors to rearrange the schedule.\nWhat professors don't understand is that students don't have time to look days and weeks down the road: Assignments due tomorrow take precedent over assignments due a month from now. "Time management" just means getting today's assignment in on time, even if that means an all-nighter for tomorrow's work. It's hard enough keeping up with work, let alone getting ahead. A student won't give a major assignment a second thought until a week before it's due, not because we don't want to, but because something else is due sooner.\nFortunately, Dead Week is survived by his drunker, rowdier brother, Little 5 Week, who is holding memorial services on Kirkwood all this week. Ten minutes of silence might be too much to ask, but tonight, as eight shots of tequila and a half-digested pizza stares up at you from the toilet, remember that Dead Week is alive in all of us.