Easter is anything but a holiday

It’s about this time of year that we are all asking the same question: why is the library coffee bar open such short hours on weekends? Really, they’d make an incredible profit at 11pm on the Saturday night of Week 9, when everyone is panicking about the deadlines they should really have been panicking about two weeks ago at least. Caffeine is the buzzword (no pun intended) at this time of year as energy drinks, coffee and Pro Plus become the only things you want to consume. This will only get worse after the Easter break, until by the time exams are over you’ll all be sitting around doing your best Charlie Sheen impressions, only this time involuntarily, and your children will cry over your exploded body.

It really doesn’t matter what year you are in: freshers will be worried about not screwing up their first year at uni; second-years will struggle with the fact that all the interesting stuff has suddenly fallen away from their degrees; and third- and fourth-years will be terrified about meeting the grades for the job or post-graduate degree they may or may not have lined up.

Basically this time of year sucks. Just as the sun begins to shine, you’re forced to be confined in a library where they insist on keeping the radiators on all year round. You see the ice cream van driving tantalisingly past the window many floors below, singing out its soft sirensong, a twee version of Greensleeves or some such tune that will be stuck in your head all day as you grapple with words and/or numbers for hours upon hours. It’s easy to feel disheartened.

This is the point where we should say, “Don’t be disheartened! Chin up! You’re doing great!” But to be fair, you might be doing terribly. Some of us at the _Boar_ are in the same boat – primarily because we spend eight hours out of every ten in the office rather than meeting our own deadlines.

So the positivity must come from within the disheartenment rather than by banishing it. Rest assured knowing that it’s part and parcel of the university experience and you’ll leave here richer because of it. Not richer in money, of course, but in your head or something. The ability to deal with stressful situations and come out with your head high is something that will be invaluable in the workplace, and means that Rudyard Kipling might write a poem about you from beyond the grave. And imagine, if you can do that here, how easy it will be with a normal person’s sleeping patterns!

The real trap is not depression but procrastination. Even if you resist Facebook and other social networks, the desire to polish your desk or wash your sheets again will seem ever more tempting. On which note, why are you reading this? Go do that essay. Now.