Welcome, readers, to the patriarch of all special editions, the one to wade you precariously through what might be the most trying week of these last five months. Relax, engineers, we all have it bad. Get over it.

I would have taken the opportunity to generously highlight how to waste your finals week, but Jonathon Jacobson has already taken that liberty (see 4A).

In the spirit of this traumatic period, I guess I’ll dispense some other type of valuable advice, if that is all that senior status has earned me. It’s a little hard for me to know what type of studying reputation I’ve garnered during my years here, but I think we all share similar sentiments. Here are some general thoughts that might lighten your proverbial load … bare with me.

Fort Nerd-om

Historians have yet to pinpoint precisely when in University history did arrogance and pride team up with casual conversation about final exams. However, I have personally discovered that people in the sciences tend to have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to discussing how miserable their lives are during this momentous week, when all they really want is to be recognized. Kind of like in the first grade when you wanted Mrs. Applebee to know you didn’t need to pull your pants all the way down to your ankles when you went to make pee-pee: I get it.

Allow me to lasso you with the rope of truth and yank you back into our universe, the one where no one cares. These statements may appear ostensibly rash, but they are no further from the truth than my button is to my fly. So relax a little bit, Bill Nye.

Whoa-there, freshman:

Open wide my fellow freshmen, this should sooth your academic throats and come over you like a nice warm blanket: As a freshmen you have more time to rectify the ghost of academic past than any other group of students on campus. No need to have an aneurism over micro-econ. As a senior, I have little time to mend my ways of this and next semester. However you, you have seven or more to lift yourself out of the grave that you have so haphazardly dug for yourself. Plus, look at it this way: Take this year to familiarize yourself with your own most effective way to study and master your caffeine addiction. I hold myself in a high regard when it comes to either of these departments, so trust me.

Why I’m optimistic with finals

I happen to be in a major where my core classes necessitate large writing and reporting assignments that end with a final story, as opposed to an exam. I say, pick your poison. An enterprise story can be just as trying, if not harder, than an exam, depending on which lobe of your brain you depend most heavily on.

I have two exams over Thursday and Friday, making it more than difficult to fret about on Monday evening; you can’t argue that.

To reiterate, let us join hands and rejoice over these bittersweet six or seven days. Before you know it, you’ll be curled up by the fire, having consumed entirely too much ‘nog and holding a conversation with your dog about your favorite type of calzone.

So raise your glasses, get over yourself and, if you’re under 20, I don’t want to hear it.