• If you're at the computer, put your status to Online. 
• If it says Away, we know you're really not.
• If there's some current event going on that you feel everyone must know about, please don't write about it in your personal message.  We don't need a million billion people telling us the obvious.  (personal message:"it's snowing!".  Well no sh*t!)

• Someone forbidden to eat junk food of any kind may manifest his or her cravings for the forbidden foods by obsessively collecting McDonald's coupons and then progressing to entering McDonald's restaurants without actually purchasing food.
• Someone forbidden contact with an ex-girlfriend (after a shaky breakup) yet whom still desires to see that ex may manifest such motivation in an unhealthy stalking behaviour, first with obsessive e-mailing, then phoning, then more overt stalking.

In any case, the overwhelming influences of instinctual drives manage to overcome any kind of moral reasoning and moral inhibition.  Now, how can one successfully overcome neurotic obsessive acts?  Psychological therapy always begins with first understanding the underlying forces at play.

See all you non-believers, psychology isn't so useless after all...

• Mental alertness has greatly fluctuated.  Sympathetic nervous system activity generally was maintained and overpowered parasympathetic activity.
• SNS activity was largely assisted by ingestion of about 5 cups of Tim Horton's caffeinated coffee.
• Coffee effects decreased in potency with each successive serving.
• Narcoleptic-like attacks punctuated the morning of the exam.
• Apathy increased post-exam.
• EXAM WAS A BREEZE!!!  (And this is the main point here: cramming DOES work, provided the exam you're cramming for involves mainly memorization.)

“I have one week left to learn all there is to know about physics,” said 21-year-old Jason Penner, who hasn’t gone to a single Physics class this semester. “I have it in for me, it’ll be a week filled with coffee and all-nighters.”

But Penner isn’t alone in feeling the crunch of exams.

Lindsay Kratsch, a 19-year-old science student, says she’s not only learning in class, she is also learning the art of cramming.

“All semester I haven’t done very much and now I’m trying to cram it all in,” said Kratsch, who has spent most of this week at the library, “but the second I walk out of that exam I know I’ll forget most of it.”

Every student is unique in how they approach study week. Some like to study in the library, others like classrooms, while some even like studying in their bed.

“The best way for me to study is in my bed,” said 19-year-old Ashleigh Enns who is in University 1, “I find it relaxing and usually I turn on some mellow music. I can’t study in silence.”

However, some don’t even have the luxury of sleeping in their bed.

Yingge Geng, a 29-year-old architecture student at the University of Manitoba, has only slept 10 hours this past week and most of that was on the cold floor of her studio at the University. The first thing she plans on doing after the exam period is sleeping.

“We like our courses,” said Geng, “but we don’t have time to sleep, let alone time to enjoy them.” 

Story and photo by Erin Carter.

http://myuminfo.umanitoba.ca/index.asp?sec=10&too=100&eve=8&dat=12/4/2006&npa=11790