Gather round, team
By Chandler Walter, Humour Editor
I don’t know what to say, really. Two weeks till the biggest tests of our academic lives. Our marks all come down to what we do today. Now either we study as a class, or we will crumble. Mark by mark, test by test, we study until we’re finished. We’re in hell right now, classmates, believe me. And we can procrastinate, and be unprepared, or we can study our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One review question at a time.
I look around I see these young faces and I think about how I made every mistake a college student can make. I procrastinated my responsibilities, believe it or not. And lately I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.
You know, when you get further into post-secondary, things get taken from you. That’s part of college. But you only learn when you start failing classes. You find out classes are just a game of marks. Because in class the margin for error is so small, one presentation you don’t quite pass, one participation grade you don’t fulfill. The marks we need are all around us. They’re in every class we skip, every textbook we don’t open.
To pass your classes, you gotta fight for that mark. You gotta tear yourself and everyone around you to pieces for that mark. You claw with your FINGERNAILS for that mark. Cause you know, when you add up all those marks, that’s what’s going to make the fucking difference between passing and failing. Between LIVING and DYING.
Great GPAs are born from great opportunity, and that’s what you have here. That’s what you’ve earned here this semester. One test. If you take it ten times you might fail nine, but not this test. Not this final.
You were born to be passing students. Every one of you. You were meant to be studying tonight. This is your time. Because classmates… What will you do without a degree? Will you become employed? Aye, study and you may breakdown; procrastinate and you will stay sane. At least for a while. And lying in your beds two weeks from now would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just once chance, to come back here and grind your way towards earning college credentials?
Classmates, I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the determination of students fails, when we forsake our group presentation partners and break all bonds of teamwork. But it is not this day. This day we study. For all that you hold dear I bid you study, students of the West!
