I don't have anything to put here. I've been busy, trying to get everything lined up, trying to get everything finished off, trying to get to....what? So you wake up every morning, and get after it, because right this minute there isn't anything else to do. Wait, I think I wrote this story.
Finals are realizing you haven't moved in a hour trying to let your brain find a foothold in the text of your own notes so that you can rewrite them for your answer. Then realizing that what you're looking at might not be the best answer, so you find something more applicable, and start the whole process over. Again.
Finals are looking at what you've done like its disgusting because you know you can do better, then looking at the question again and realizing you've answered it and there is nothing else to say. And then wondering what you did wrong because what you wrote doesn't look all that impressive.
Finals are realizing you can't eat what you want, because lazy bleeds over, so you structure your meals like you structure your day, up early and straight to the computer to start the process of synthesizing what you've learned into what form they want you to show that you learned enough to make them think you've learned enough. Or at least enough to look like it.
Finals are feeling in the pit of your stomach that you've forgotten something. Not the relatively annoying idea that you've left something on the counter and haven't made it to the corner yet so you can turn around sensation, but the idea that you've forgotten to bring oxygen and you're on the moon. It happens to me after each exam, moments after every paper has left my hand, or the upload button has been pressed for the take homes. Five more minutes and I would have rewritten an entire twenty pages.
Finals are looking at what's left and wondering where the rest of it is.
Finals are that same feeling you've been getting, only now if you stumble that's all she wrote. Only it turns out if you ever stumbled again, because you have stumbled before, that it was going to be all she wrote anyway. So this time is no different than every other time. But then that realization does absolutely nothing to lessen the tension of the moment.
Finals are, this time, the "new question mark", because before when I finished my finals there were eventually just more finals to come, more measurements of my ability and ways to grade my legal growth. This time there will be nothing else of this kind to come my way. My new normal has run its course, and you realize that beyond that is the unknown. When you reach a goal you should have a new goal. It's the idea that 15 days ago I was working towards this moment, and 15 days from now where will I be?
Well, in this case, studying for the bar, but you get the idea. Then what?
Finals are the barkeep staying away for your own good.
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