I Attended Finals At Baruch College:
Going around, rushing back and forth from building to building the last two weeks of the semester can be described as chaotic for many a college student, especially those in their first year. The conglomerates we form in bustling spastic bunches, and slowly breathing piles of sleeping students creates a form; a creation of the institution of learning. It’s called music- “vibrating bodies” in the words of Professor Wollman who I interviewed for a freshman seminar assignment. The constant building up of tension as friction creates sparks as we pass each other in a rush to get to the end of our load. It’s like watching the ball drop or releasing a deep breath. The institution is a body and you interact with the performers by becoming one and getting lost in the tossing of papers and scrambling for seats in the library.
I read an article in the Boston Globe stating that college students are studying less and less as the years go by which I found quite interesting. What I found even more interesting about this article is that it dismissed the advent of Facebook as a key role player in this shift. When I asked my fellow students as well as myself about studying, the topic of Facebook always seemed to find its way into the conversation. For every credit one should spend 2 hours studying per week, in theory. However in practice it more accurately that for every one credit one spends three times as much time on Facebook and other sites of distraction. So, if social networking sites are not the causes of regression, then what is? Students I have asked say studying is dependent on the class. The article “What Happened to Studying?” also acknowledged that major differences between the college students of today and those of the past decades is the amount of free time that students have and the tools they are working with to study. “They don’t have to bang out a term paper on a typewriter; nor do they need to wander the stacks at the library for hours, tracking down some dusty tome. “ These facts and opinions reflect and verify what we see and live everyday, but this is no testament to the smarts of today’s students.
On a normal weekday, the libraries are only fairly occupied; one may even find a whole table to spread out their lunch, book, and laptop. “Studying”, and by the quotes I mean not studying for those whose sarcasm receptors were not attuned at the moment. Sprinklings of shuffling papers in and out of bags, opening and closing laptops that automatically log onto Facebook even when your hands mean to type in a different web address, minds drift, cough, quiet, stare, a little too quiet. What is going on outside of academia is the focus. With this inquiry most of us acquiesce to the silence and leave the building to find life; people living. “Do you know how hard it is to stay silent for four minutes and thirty-three seconds” Professor Wollman said this past week referring to the piece “4’33” by the post- modernist composer John Cage. In his composition, the silence is music filled with the awkward ruffling and mumbling of the confused and unexpecting crowd. And yet the silence of a library is stifling of life not expository of it. “You’re not supposed to talk in the library.” This is understood from grade school. Because of this, under normal circumstances we flee the library at all costs to remind ourselves of the life outside of the learning facility.
Having participated in the finals week at Baruch College, or more accurately the pre-finals initiation rite, the national decrease in the amount of studying is mystifyingly whipped away for the duration. Records are amiss, swept into a Bermuda triangle of national statistics. It is this biannual tradition of ‘vibrating bodies” that take center stage to dispel the rumors about generation y that are found to be true any other time of year. The composition of the masses of student bodies in flurries working together, whether they see it or not, toward the common coming of the end of a five month marathon. Scribbling, reading intently, STUDYING, each and every second of time is filled with a movement made by a group or sole performer. It may be you laying your head on the table to get a few minutes rest before you pick back up and rejoin the orchestra playing “tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap, swoosh, scribble tap tap, thud squeak, waddle waddle … woosh vroom waddle squeak… tap tap tap tap.” In polyphony of sorts, the learning institution of higher education becomes a life within itself. For the few weeks that this exists, life is still outside. Silence that would normally keep students away, resides in the commute home and the all-nighter that awaits the student when he gets there. However, this only last so long until the life dissipates from the frenzied students, flipping their last page, reading their last line, and then closing the book to look for the life outside once again.
And so, the display of hurriedness and flying papers everywhere is only temporary, making its observance all the more significant. “A right of passage” my advisor called. Once you make it through your first semester of finals you are officially a college student. And therefore, with my first attendance of finals week, I will have not just watched in passing, the frenzied performers of this show, I will have also become one in my own right.
References:
O’Brien, Keith. “What Happened to Studying? – The Boston Globe.” Boston.com – Boston, MA News, Breaking News, Sports, Video. 4 July 2010. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/04/what_happened_to_studying/>.
