The thing I love about Finals Week and Dead Week is that despite 25 pages left to type on my paper, the stack of flashcards with their yet-unmemorized molecules, and the nasty final covering 1,500 pages of dense reading material, my yen for self-improvement strays from the academic to . virtually anything else.

Dead Week, Wednesday, 5:32 p.m. Suddenly, a semester’s worth of dust bunnies need to be exterminated. Now. The slovenly trademark of corners and bed frames needs to go.

The need to end the long lives of dust bunnies is directly proportional to the number of notes that still need to be taken for the term paper.

Dead Week, Saturday, 11:07 a.m. My life would be so much better if I suddenly created a 500-line Excel file detailing the life cycle of every penny that’s passed through my checking account last year. The number of equations I enter in the cells is a function of the yet-to-be learned organic chemistry equations.

Dead Week, Sunday, 9:36 p.m. Should make that emergency trip to the library to get four more books on Earl Warren. Get hung up reading “Yoga for Dummies” and spend the rest of the evening perfecting the Warrior’s Pose and Downward-Facing Dog. If only I could get centered. Then I could really smoke that paper.

Finals Week, Monday, 3:45 p.m. Less than 24 hours to that Russian final. But this is a post-Cold War world. Why bother? Actually, maybe if I learned Sanskrit, I could understand the basis for lots of languages.

Finals Week, Tuesday 10:32 p.m. Hmmm . type my paper, or call a friend? Maybe I should check and see how she is doing on her paper. Maybe she needs me to proofread it. Maybe proofreading it will require alcohol.

Finals Week, Wednesday, 2:12 a.m. I got half the paper proofread. If only I got some cappuccino. Then I could finish mine.

Finals Week, Wednesday, 2:12 p.m. I’m sure all this would be a lot easier if I just showered and got out of the same skanky gym pants that I’ve been wearing since Friday.

But why shower if I can’t exfoliate? Compulsory hour-long trip to Wal-Mart in search of something with microbeads.

Finals Week, Thursday, 11:56 a.m. Thank God!! I handed in my stat final. This whole week has given a whole new meaning to “deviation.”

Finals Week, Thursday, 12:05 p.m. Bibliography printed. Paper stapled. A prayer for professorial mercy. I slide it under her door.

Finals Week, Thursday, 1:52 p.m. No. 1 priority for self improvement: sleep.

Rachel Faber Machacha is a graduate student in international development studies from Emmetsburg.