What's happening on UAT's campus- A blog published by UAT Students.

Greetings and salutations everyone!

For many, this week has been quite the rollercoaster, being the week right before Christmas. But before we can celebrate in holiday cheer, we must be thrown into the fray with Finals week!

[[cue screaming from college students everywhere]]

Except not really.

This is one of the last days before the end of finals week, and I have but one thing to say. Or two.

You made it.

We made it.

The semester is over, and we can finally put to rest our keyboards, our pens, our devices.

It's over.

Having gone to school constantly since leaving high school, it's been a rough ride. I have been filling out 3 semesters per year for the past 2 years, and I'm almost at the end so I know how it feels to go there and back with finals week. Overall, it's a VERY stressful time, but it's well worth it in the end because we are able to pursue our education further and rejoice when we can finally take a long breather with the holiday.

For my finals, I wrote so many papers (being design document or whitepaper oriented), totaling around 74 pages (single spaced) across 5 classes. This varied from the two mobile applications that I helped build (one being my future Student Innovation Project as well!), network configuration diagrams, and penetration testing/network security monitoring reports and more. It's been a pretty rough week overall and I'm completely and utterly drained!

If I can say anything about how to survive this as a college student, it would be a short list, but it really helps.

• Get it done early. I've been working on these finals since last week, and getting it done earlier will lead to less all-nighters and more time to not stress out about it because it's due in 48 hours.
• Make time for things you enjoy. All work and no play is horrendous. I spent a lot of time in a group call with some friends just joking around and playing League of Legends and listening to their banter about Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
• Remember to eat. Nothing is worse than doing this on an empty stomach. In a group? Pull together some money for a pizza and some drinks for a pizza party.
• Remember to sleep. Sleep is necessary and that 6 hour rest won't detract too much from your work. As long as you set time aside to actually work on stuff, then sleep is no problem.

I'll just need to remember this for whenever I'm tackling my last semester in January!

So kick back, relax, fix up some hot cocoa or maybe some green tea. The semester is over.

Here's to another great one by the time January rolls around.

Until next time,

-Nicholas"TAE"