Study buddies

Last semester, I uncharacteristically turned in a paper three days early.\nI was studying in Australia, living on the “party floor” in a dorm in a country already notorious for excessive partying. Deli meat routinely came flying through my door without warning, a perpetually drunk Spaniard named Sergio hid in the co-ed bathrooms waiting to tickle girls’ ears and an Australian floormate constantly ran up and down the hall spray-painting philosophic slogans regarding female anatomy onto everything with a surface. So getting anything accomplished at all, let alone early, was normally something I considered a personal victory.\nBut when I handed in my paper on this particular day, what I felt instead of relief was, strangely, regret for having finished already. Not because I had enjoyed writing it, because I hadn’t. Writing it was like pulling teeth ... from a baby. The regret was because all my friends were in that class, and I realized I didn’t want to miss out as they’d spend the next three nights staying up late and stressing out together.\nCollege can be excruciating and tedious, but nothing is ever that bad when it comes with the consolation that you’re all in it together. And it’s those nights that you stay up with your friends, just pounding out the assignments, that you really bond as students. The projects end up getting finished, and the papers end up getting written somehow. But it’s the bonding that occurs between the late-night coffee runs and the early-morning nervous breakdowns that has a way of staying with you. \nI rarely remember the grades I received. Yet I remember very clearly the first all-nighter I pulled in high school with my friend Sophi, when we put off our assignment of creating a political timeline of the entire world. I remember when my friend Bevin and I spent four hours building a “study fort” out of fitted sheets and laundry baskets, then stayed inside it all night reading “Romeo and Juliet” up until fifteen minutes before our English final. I’ll never forget freshman year when Joy, Ina and I crammed for our New Testament final for so long that by the time the sun came up, we were too high off of Bible-reading to do anything except dance offensively to Eminem. I don’t recall the class I slept through two years ago, but you can bet I still remember who I went fountain-hopping with the night before (until the cops busted our party at Showalter Fountain).\nAs this semester swings into gear, I encourage you to not go it alone. If you’re going to be up all night, grab your laptop and find another friend who is also going to be up all night. Even when you’re so stressed out that you want to swallow Vaseline and throw stones at buses, don’t forget to find pleasure in your fellow students. If you miss out on that, you’re kind of missing the point. You won’t remember the tests, papers or (hopefully) the grades; you will remember the people who made it all worth it.