Midterms. The dreaded time when professors finally get to sit in their offices, rub their hands together gleefully, let out an evil laugh or two and imagine the tears running down their students’ faces.
As Elsa would say, “Conceal, don’t feel. Don’t let them know.” But, unfortunately, the intimidating reality of the situation is that when the Blackboard announcement says “only the powerpoints will be on the test,” it might as well read a Gandalf-esque “You. Shall. Not. Pass.”
Midterms are when your favorite professor becomes the bane of your existence, and the cancellation of a study date becomes the second cold war. When your precious Saturday is rudely ripped from your grasp and replaced with a three hour long midterm on the most common sense subject imaginable — yes, I am looking at you Comm 103. When you suddenly want to cry, study, eat, sleep and punch a wall all at the same time.
Although the stress and tears are arguably the worst part of midterms, let’s not forget the horrendous parking situation, the excruciatingly long lines to get food, and the complete lack of study space even in the library. I mean, honestly, if the lack of traffic during the rest of the year is any indication and you’ve been avoiding class this long, should you really even bother trying to study on campus now? I don’t think studying on campus as opposed to at home will make all of the information you’ve been dodging magically seep into your brain.
Even with all of the slackers crawling out from their caves during midterms, now that Parking Services is limiting the number of parking passes available, you’d think there would actually be enough parking spaces to, oh I don’t know, park every car. Unfortunately, that would make too much sense. Now we’re stuck with an increasingly high number of obnoxious drivers speeding through the parking garage, running people over, then asking “Are you leaving? Can I take your spot? Want me to drive you to your car? Or I can just follow right on your heels like a stalker?” Chill out man, I’m just cutting through to West Commons.
In terms of the crazily long lines to get food, let’s just say that any time it takes over half an hour to get through the Panda Express “express line,” there is a problem. I just want my completely American, unhealthy and in-no-way-close-to Chinese food within 30 seconds of entering East Commons. Is that really too much to ask?
Not to mention the huge blob that is supposed to be the Rubio’s and Subway lines, because for some reason we can get through Chem 100 but cannot figure out how to form an orderly line. A line, literally the easiest shape ever.
While having to wait 20 minutes to get our daily Chipotle fix turns most of us into the equivalent of grumpy old men, the lack of Starbucks locations on campus poses a real danger. How are we supposed to curb the Pumpkin Spice Latte fever if there is no Starbs in East Commons, West Commons or the library? Was it really a good idea to replace the all-powerful java factory with a salad bar? We’re not rabbits, we need protein-rich PSLs and ungodly amounts of caffeine.
While the library does have one lonely Peabody’s coffee cart, it is sorely lacking study space. Only a quarter of each floor of the Love Library is used as study space, while dusty books that haven’t been touched in decades sit there taking up the rest of it. By the time 10 a.m. comes around, the library is hot and smelly and full of exhausted, caffeine-deprived and slightly brain-dead humans. If San Diego State can manage to scrounge up money for useless projects that take years to finish, I’m sure they could manage to figure out a way to fix the overcrowding problem so that their students can focus on the actual education portion of the college experience. Unfortunately, for now, we will have to suck it up, take the trolley, bring a homemade lunch and crawl into a dusty corner in between bookshelves to cry — I mean study.
