The most wonderful time of the year

Middle Class Rage
    By Monica Lesmerises

Get off the Stairmaster, put away your lipstick, and stop doing butt crunches.

It's the end of the semester, and the rules of the game have changed. If you want to impress your friends and get lots of lusty looks in the dining hall, its time to break out the sweatpants and use your eyeliner to create the sleep-deprivation look.

In these last two weeks of the semester, when a Yalie's level of perceived misery becomes the measure of his or her social worth, flirting is replaced with rounding down three hours and 53 minutes of sleep to "I only slept like, an hour."

As finals approach, amateurs will brag of all-nighters at the dinner table. The more seasoned will go to great lengths to publicize their misery. Suddenly, those studying in the college library will bring blankets, coffee makers, and bunny slippers along with their backpacks. For men, razors will rust in their shower caddies. Collared shirts will become the scarlet letter of those with only two finals. Women will put their stacked-heel loafers in the closet, and sneakers will reappear from hiatus. There will be no role for hairbrushes--the only acceptable finals hairstyle is a clip with one-fourth of your hair in it sticking on the top of your head, and you must constantly take it out and stick it back in while reading.

Lest you think appearance is everything, remember not to make certain slips of the tongue this time of year. If you want to have any friends, never confess to getting eight hours of sleep in a night. A well-rested Yalie is not respected anywhere on campus. Get used to listing the numbers of finals you have, and don't ever admit that one is Cr/D/F. When reciting how many papers you have, count one twice if you wrote a draft.

While perpetuating lies, do your best to start dating someone who has more work than you. Waste their time, and think how beautiful you must be for someone to sacrifice precious study time for you. You need a self-esteem boost anyway, since you cringe at your own image this time of year. Make new friends who have more work than you. Find that girl who has to write 80 pages in 10 days, and eat every meal with her. Say, "yeah, me too," to everything she says, but rejoice in your mere three finals.

The entire night of the Holiday Ball, talk about how you shouldn't be out. Talk about how you're going to the library at nine the next morning. If someone's going at eight, inject that you're going to write a paper before you go to the library.

Start thinking about how investment banking doesn't hold a candle to writing two seminar papers. Talk about how 80 hours a week is nothing. Don't leave your computer screen to pee more than once every five pages. But don't miss a dining hall meal for anything. You need to go to drum up support, pity, and awe for the three finals you have on one day.

To prevent yourself from hating Yale for inflicting this torture upon you, take it out on Harvard. Hate Harvard even more than you did two weeks ago. Let the weight of the "Finals after Christmas!" cheer sink in. Fantasize about January 15^th, when you will be shopping classes, and poor Harvard saps will be taking finals. Even worse, think of New Year's Eve, and how many Harvard losers will be studying. Wear your Huck Farvard shirt for six days in a row with real pride. Don't wear a bra under it, and sleep in it to save time at night. Justify sleeping in it and wearing it the next day, because you only slept for a few hours, which really is like not sleeping when your friends ask you how many hours you slept the night before.

So if you're going to do poorly this academic season, or at least act like you're doing poorly, do one thing well: complain.

And when you're bitching at lunch about how you have a 60-page paper due in 20 minutes, and you haven't even started it yet, make sure you do it loud enough so I can hear come over, nod my head and say, "Yeah, me too."

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