Forget taking finals and opt for a Battle Royale

If any of you are anything like me, you have grown to hate the last week in April. Seven… If any of you are anything like me, you have grown to hate the last week in April. Seven days away from the freedom of summer, finals week can be as intimidating as Tony Soprano in a buffet line.

Finals week is by far the worst way to end a semester. Spring semester is always so much fun, but it’s ruined by a week of cramming and stress. We start out still high off post-winter holiday joy, hit our peak over spring break and March Madness and are kept happy by the increasingly warm weather and the female student body’s decision to break out of its sweat-suit cocoon. But then, out of nowhere, No. 2 pencils and blue testing booklets rain down upon us like the 11th plague. It hurts more than emotionally – those pencils can be really sharp.

There are two possible scenarios during finals week – either you are a good student, stay in to study and miss out on seeing some of your friends for the last time in four months, or you blow everything off, go out to party and have to worry the rest of the week about whether or not your teacher will care that you drooled all over your Scantron sheet. Either way, we, as students and human beings, lose.

The end of April is the absolute worst time to have a weeklong academic beating. It’s like all your teachers attach fishing lines to different parts of your brain and then all of a sudden yell out “Pull!”

The stars don’t even agree with finals week. Right now, the zodiac symbol Taurus is occupying the sun. This naturally sensual bull is associated with hedonism, laziness, inflexibility and antipathy. None of these qualities coincide with good test taking. How are we supposed to hit the books when astrology is telling us to sit in velvet couches eating chocolate-covered grape leaves while throwing darts at pictures of our worst enemies?

The last week in April is, among other things, National TV Turn-Off Week, which actually does help with finals. Other than that, nothing seems to fit. It’s also National Lingerie, YMCA and Secretary Weeks. How am I supposed to concentrate when right outside my window a woman is typing in her underwear while being serenaded by a construction worker, a policeman and a Native American chief?

And don’t get me started on the irony of it being Reading Is Fun and Teacher Appreciation Weeks. Don’t expect too many celebrations for those around the Pitt campus in the next few days.

While I know that students need to be evaluated in some way at the end of a term, maybe we should look into different ways of doing it. Instead of a week full of tests, projects and portfolios, why not make finals week an experience to remember?

After thinking about this long and hard when I should have been studying, I came up with the most logical solution – a campus-wide battle royale. We’ll give it a fancy name, like “Examin-ocalypse” or “The Thrilla’ on the Hill-a.” Two teams, the Students and the Teachers, will meet up at the Petersen Events Center in an all-out academic war.

Students representing different majors will go up against the professors who taught them everything they know, with Chancellor Nordenberg acting as the Roman Emperor/thumbs up-thumbs down guy from high above in one of the luxury boxes.

In front of a sold-out crowd, the events would be exhilarating. English majors will try to out-sonnet their teachers, while engineers will have to build bridges across the entire length of the court before their professors can get to the other side. The mathematics contest will involve counting to 1 billion as fast as possible, while the administration of justice contestants will have to Houdini their way out of a pair of handcuffs.

Psychology majors will have to make their subjects as uncomfortable as possible. Philosophy students will have to sit in a chair and look contemplative without blinking. Political scientists will have to yell out their own opinions as loudly as possible. And communication majors will, umm, well, I guess we can work that out later. The only real problem I’m seeing is the extra tests for performance enhancers that we’ll have to do for nursing and pharmacy representatives.

In the end, the scores will be tallied by an unbiased independent agency that I will personally choose myself. If the students win more events than the teachers, we all get A’s. If not, then all the students will quietly go to their assigned rooms and take their normally scheduled exams.

I think that this is the fairest scenario possible. But, until the finals policy is changed, I guess I’ll have to go back and study. Or just wake up in time to dry off my test.

E-mail Sam at seg23@pitt.edu if you can pull yourself away from your books.