Building a snowman that represents finals week stress.
BUILDING A SNOWMAN THAT REPRESENTS FINALS WEEK STRESS.
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The biting wind of late semester, the heavy cloak of winter settling over campus – it’s a familiar chill that invariably brought with it the icy dread of finals. We all remember those nights, hunched over books in the library, the world outside a blur of falling snow. But for some of us, that snow wasn't just a backdrop; it was a canvas for a peculiar, strangely cathartic tradition: the finals week stress snowman.
It wasn't about crafting a perfect, picturesque figure. Oh no. This was a physical manifestation of our collective anxiety. A slumped, lopsided mound of snow with twig arms flailing in existential despair, or perhaps clutching a tiny, imaginary textbook. Maybe it had eyes of pure exhaustion, or a perpetually worried frown made from a stray leaf. It was our frozen alter ego, embodying every late-night caffeine-fueled panic, every complex problem set, every essay deadline.
There was something profoundly unifying about it. Seeing these temporary, frosty effigies appear across quads, each one a silent scream into the cold, dark night. It was a shared, unspoken acknowledgment of the pressure cooker we lived in, a momentary, absurd release before diving back into the academic trenches. Looking back, it seems a little mad, doesn't it? Yet, in that moment, it felt necessary. A primal, icy art project against the backdrop of academic intensity. It was a tradition we perhaps never loved in the moment, but definitely understood, and maybe, just maybe, secretly cherished for the shared absurdity it represented.
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