A Sick Man's High: Why I Love Midterms

By Joey Barnett '12

Around the time that most students are considering dropping out of Princeton, I’m all about the holiday spirit. That’s right: I love midterms. When I think of midterms, I think of freshman year, when four of my friends and I holed ourselves up in a Frist classroom, nodding off beside empty cans of Redbull and piles of reading that should have been done three weeks earlier. When I think of midterms, I think of delirious laughter, falling out of chairs, and the occasional snore. When I think of midterms, I think of the countdown to Princeton Halloween, and the minute we all step out of our last traumatic exam and run toward Prospect. Call it masochism, but to me, this is the life.

This probably has something to do with the fact that I am an anthropology major, whereas most of my friends are in the economics or engineering departments (disgusting, I know). While they are going to office hours and stressing about problem sets, I have been found recording and transcribing dinner conversations, or reading all about Bollywood for my JP. Midterms are the one time of the year when all of us are on the same schedule—while they are frantically studying for their econ exam, I am banging out a 12-page paper on honky-tonk bars for anthropology of sound. All of us are in the same place: screwed.

This is one of those few times of the year when solidarity is at a max, and I would sacrifice my 8 hours of sleep any day—well, maybe 4 of them, and even then, for only those 14 days out of the year—to get that feeling of mutual hysteria and contempt for the system all over again.