cramming

The opposite of procrastination is a sad alternative, cramming.

Cramming may very well be the single most stressful aspect of college. (behind actually paying for school itself) 

The concept is simple; as stated before, simply procrastinate to the point of stupidity, then attempt to absorb all the information required in a minuscule amount of time. Normally the night before a test or due date, the student will sit down to their subject, armed with an arsenal of caffeine, all distractions put aside except for the motivating rock music that seems to do more harm than good, and they will attempt to stuff as much information into their consciousness that the rapidly approaching deadline will allow.   

What will inevitably occur is the brain, sensing it's impending doom, will panic thus decreasing it's ability to retain information by approximately 50%. When the student realizes the decreased ability, they will compensate by consuming caffeine, which increases brain activity by 125% but only increases the brain's recall by 25% bringing the ability to retain information up to 75% of normal capacity. However, this heightened ability has a half-life of three hours which coincides with the time that it takes for the body to process caffeine. At this point, only around 60% of the required information will have been studied, but the body will go into "crash and burn" mode, which forces the brain to strain to keep everything going plus the added pressure of studying which will cause a hard drive overload that leaves the student basically senseless at four o'clock in the morning.

Perhaps this is a bit exaggerated. Nevertheless, this is what it feels like.

The sad truth about cramming is that it is comparable to running on a treadmill: it’s a lot of effort, but you don’t actually accomplish anything. Cramming doesn’t work. The only tangible result is a migraine.

The only thing that is accomplished is roughly four hours of sleep, residual grogginess, and a hazy trip to their class, where the student discovers that they are wholly unprepared for their test but they have lost the ability to care; this is the time that students are satisfied with receiving a D.

 Needless to say, they earned it.



"80% of the final exam will be based on the one lecture you missed and the one book you didn’t read."