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All Fun & Satire

The web of horror

By Annaliese Meyer

So midterms have come and gone. And if you’re like me, of the slightly neurotic and emotionally unstable variety, you’re still recovering. There is nothing like the intense and isolated midterm schedule that demands absolute vigilance and concentration to slowly unravel your confidence in everything.

Come with me to an imaginary mind cave, a place where I can visually guide you through the horror of midterms. It begins just fine; we’ve been waiting for this moment since we totally read the syllabus… However, soon enough it isn’t just readings and class to worry about. It’s essays, assignments, group presentations and more! So we map out a schedule in our cave, with dates, times, work schedules, all connected with red string. Like some psychopath we cut and paste, attempting to align our minds with a visual representation that may calm the overwhelming anxiety. It doesn’t help.

If anything, those goddamn mind strings just illuminate the chaos of existence. The way they cross over one another willy-nilly, blatantly showing how nothing is parallel! This obviously begs the question: do I have control over anything? Suddenly a once darkened zone of the cave is lit. It’s a primitive cave drawing of a stick figure surrounded by all the elements: fire, air, water and earth. This marks the moment the floodgates burst open and every single issue that normally slides off your shoulder becomes absolutely paramount.

Seemingly all at once strings shoot out from nowhere like the tentacles of some lower beast and wrap themselves around your loving midterm schedule. Suddenly there seems to be no time for any of it when there are much more pressing questions like, how come I’ve never owned a lint roller? Why did my sister tell me my feet look like Bilbo Baggins’? Was it because I told her she looks like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction?

After some time one of the strings begins to glow like a radioactive spider from an eighties music video. It points to an essay that’s due – tomorrow! Finally the sweet release! The limits of time have saved you from the cave! The time to ponder is over and the time for action has arrived. I can only speculate that once this realization hits, all you beautiful people sling on your Ray Bans and utter something super rad like, “Let’s do this”.

So sure, midterms pass you by, hopefully in some amazing montage including a coffee IV and a robot organizing your notes and providing lightening round quizzes every 10 minutes during an all night study sesh. But the idle time that follows reopens the cave, and you bet your OSAP loan it’s gathered dark forces in your absence… But don’t you fret ladies and gents, exams are just around the corner!    

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