Look back on this past weekend. How productive have you been? Or unproductive in some cases?

You have several finals this week, and you hadn’t studied for any of them by the time Saturday came around.

But you do think about them over and over again.

Then you watch five hours of “Gilligan’s Island.” You watch the disappointing Heisman presentation and are thrilled when the Iowa State Cyclones beat the lousy Hawkeyes in Iowa City.

Then you go shopping for Christmas presents.

It’s procrastination at its best.

You decorate your room, brush your hair for two minutes and brush your teeth for 20. You take a shower, not once, not twice, but three times for no particular reason.

Then reality sets in.

You have a 7:30 final on Monday morning. Comprehensive. You have a 7:30 final on Tuesday morning. Comprehensive. You have five finals to take and a paper worth 97 percent of your grade due this week.

After realizing this, you clean your room, stare out the window and take a 10-minute nap that lasts an hour.

You memorize the ISU basketball schedule — men’s and women’s.

You sing Christmas carols and agonize over what the 11th day of Christmas is.

You wonder why a former professor is more lenient with this semester’s class than when you had him or her.

It’s procrastination at its very best.

Reality sets in once again. You have a final in a class to which you haven’t gone all semester. You then decide to hit the books.

You read page one of your physics book.

You read the second page, the third page and the third page once again. Before you know it, you’ve been staring at the same sentence for the past 15 minutes.

You’re spacing out, so you try to concentrate once again.

You read the fourth page, the fifth page, the sixth page. You’re doing well. Only 400 pages left to read. By page 10 you’re asleep.

When you awake, for the next two hours you ponder the complexities of the chair in which you’re sitting. You ponder the spiritual existence of yourself and you wonder, “Why Finals Week? Why don’t they just call it the Week from Hell?”

You hit the books again, and this time you study longer than you ever have the entire semester.

You realize a semester’s worth of information is too much to learn in one weekend and the times you fell asleep in class haven’t helped. But your brain is absorbing a lot of information in a short time fairly well.

The refrigerator is chock full of Mountain Dew and Diet Pepsi. A few hours later its empty. The batteries have worn out after the collection of tapes on the headphones have been played six times each.

The cramming is going so well you decide on a study break.

You go to the Rec and find a million people there. You’re not the only one who thinks finals are murder.

You’re out of food, so you go visit a friend and have candy and talk about how much you’ve procrastinated.

The night before finals you fall asleep after lying awake for an hour. When you awake it’s 7:25 a.m. You have five minutes to race to your final.

You have equations and theories and lists running through your head.

After your first final, everything else goes smoothly. Everything eventually comes to an end, and now all that remains is the countdown to your last final.

You’ve done your best and now your thoughts shift to the exciting plans over break — the climb down the Grand Canyon, the trip to Manitoba, your cousin’s wedding, leaving Ames, leaving Iowa and leaving the country.

Good luck on finals and have a great winter break!