A Flyby-Advent Calendar: 25 Days of Harvard

Students dress up in holiday attire for dancing festivities in the Science Center Plaza.
Students dress up in holiday attire for dancing festivities in the Science Center Plaza. By Amy Y. Li

Whatever your religious beliefs, there’s one thing we all can have faith in: School is hard. Finals period can be harder, or it can be easier...it all depends on your attitude. We’ve got some predictions for what’s in store for the next three weeks.

Dec 1: Leave Ec1010a and pledge never to take a MWF 10 a.m. again (read: bring back Thirsty Thursday).

Dec 2: Find your Santa hat and ugly Christmas sweater strewn across the floor of the room you ended up in after first night of reading period festivities.

Dec 3: Partying on a Sunday? Why not, there’s gotta be some time that you can live a normal college kid lifestyle.

Dec 4: Your Google Calendar says: “I’m going to do a full six-hour school day studying in Lamont on Monday.” You say: “I’m going to do a full six-hour Stranger Things binge in my bed on Monday.”

Dec 5: Scramble to get an invite to the last of the final club holiday dinners. Maybe plan to “study” with that cute kid in the Owl from math class.

Dec 6: Deliver generic candle or Starbucks gift card to that TF who you absolutely need to bump up your grade.

Dec 7: 15-page paper due tomorrow? We thought you said 15-day bender starting tomorrow.

Dec 8: Primal scream. Enough said.

Dec 9: Saturday morning final, or your average weekend class schedule at prep school.

Dec 10: Reading period part two, LFG. Warning: The respite is short lived.

Dec 11: Fill out the Q-Guide to procrastinate and roast that teacher who made your life miserable all semester.

Dec 12: Cry because all your friends had early finals and left you alone in this barren wasteland of academic expectations.

Dec 13: Cry because you’re alone in your room and you somehow miss the incredibly annoying sound of your roommate’s microwave/alarm/Doo-Hickey that you have no clue what it does.

Dec 14: Get your ish together because you believe in yourself now that you did well on a Gen-Ed gem final. Hooray!

Dec 15: Cry again because you realize you can’t do anything and you’re a failure.

Dec 16: Take a break and watch the new Star Wars movie. Hey, you’ve done a lot of crying in the past 72 hours. You deserve this.

Dec 17: Book your tickets outta Cambridge for the 21st of December. We’re leavin’, baby!

Dec 18: Realize winter housing actually closes on the 20th. Buy a gift hamper to bribe your House administrator or the FDO with. (It’s between the two of you, you promise!)

Dec 19: You knew the Q-Guide was lying when it gave a math class a 4.9. Joe Blitzstein is life, but that 9 a.m. final on the last day was not cool.

Dec 20: Cry to your mom and make her promise that she won’t make you do a pset ever again.

Dec 21: Go shopping for presents and pick up your favorite book from philosophy class to impress your intellectual friend. Who said your fancy humanities education wouldn’t be practical?

Dec 22: Remember that your grades might be posted and choose not to look until after Christmas—it might just be a Christmas miracle.

Dec 23: Check the Cambridge weather forecast and feel nostalgia for the sub-freezing weather that you know is your fate when you return.

Dec 24: Hardest “would you rather” ever: Eat HUDS food on Christmas Eve, or have your aunt interrogate you on when you’ll find a nice Harvard boy?

Dec 25: Proclaim, after a bit too much (rum-infused) eggnog, that you’ll be better next semester.

Ho ho ho, merry Harvard-mas!


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