Finals induce fear in study groups

The ticking is audible.
 

Yes, I think my eardrum has, once again, been replaced with a wind-up cymbal playing tin monkey. The clock is ticking — like the white rabbit's — his pocket watch tucked just inside his waistcoat pocket, my white BlackBerry tucked just inside my brassiere. It's not ticking down the days to my death, yet. I won't be that morbid for a few more weeks. It's currently the countdown to finals.
 

During spring break I went to go see the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp.
 

Lewis Carroll and his Wonderland, the reason for which I didn't do so well on my thermodynamics final last semester — as the space in my brain that should be reserved for technical expertise on turbines and heat exchangers is occupied by Alice in Wonderland songs and trivia. And this new movie didn't taint the image in the least.

What it did do was lead me to the realization that my life in general is quite accurately portrayed in the movie, with the tea party scene really hitting home.
 

Just throw in a few textbooks, looming finals on the horizon, and engineering paper underneath the broken tea cups and saucers, and I'm the Mad Hatter, very good company, until someone says a trigger word that causes me to go into a rant over some injustice in the world. In this cast, my study partner Kyle plays the anxious March Hare.
 

More than once over spring break I received a text message from him saying "lacyyyyyy I need the numbers for the hydraulics lab nooowww, ppllleeaasssee!" When we study you can be sure to hear the occasional scholastic outburst from our table, understood only by someone working on the same exact problem. To somebody else, they may as well be asking, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Our other study partner, Shalimar, is most certainly the Queen of Hearts.

I'm not exactly happy about this realization. I would prefer to be Lizzie in Pride and Prejudice, and Kyle I'm sure would prefer to be either one of the guys in Wedding Crashers.
 

Shalimar on the other hand is probably shooting for the Queen of Hearts. She once had someone unjustifiably escorted out of Barnes & Noble just because she wanted to sit in his chair.
 

Last semester, a few days before finals were to commence, once we had found a study spot conducive to all our particular personalities (a feat in and of itself), we receive a text message from Melissa that she's coming too. This is perfectly fine with us, but then she mentions that she's bringing someone … and we freak out. We're barely nice to our friends at the end of the semester when we're cramming for finals — let alone welcoming to strangers! And just what exactly is this "friend" going to be contributing anyway?
 

Not much, if she's only just now looking for study partners. We have no time for babysitting in our current state of affairs! I quickly text her back, "There is no room. We only have one more chair. Tell your friend sorry." But I'm too late — she and her friend have arrived. Melissa sits in the chair and the new girl sits on the floor. We really did only have one more chair, but if we had another one we would have hidden it.
 

Shalimar and I are not happy in the least. She sends me a text, "I'm gonna be mean to her." Melissa then asks out loud, "Are you guys texting each other?" So then we all text Melissa explaining ourselves and why we just simply can't have new people around — not now. Not when the dynamic has already been so firmly established! She agreed but said she just couldn't tell her no, because Melissa, unlike Shalimar, Kyle, and I, doesn't live in a world written by a man having an epilepsy-induced hallucination. She lives in a romantic comedy where the girl is even cuter under stress.
 

So when late April comes, if you see some friends and me in the muddy cedar treed swamp that surrounds the Student Union, trying to fit head first into one of the turtle holes, all while Melissa is calling down to us, "Come on guys aren't we going to study?" don't be surprised.
 

That's just me and my favorite study group not dealing with the stress of finals very well.