We had a couple of gross and rainy days on Monday and Tuesday, which felt appropriately dreary. Even in good weather, finals are not necessarily a time for high spirits. Today is thankfully sunny. But finals stress has a way of creeping in during all kinds of weather;  in talking to your Deacs, you may find them especially harried, or short tempered, or teary. These are all pretty normal emotions to go through during the stress of finals.

So if you get what I call the Frantic Phone Call (or text) where your student is cranky, crying, dramatic, etc., remember that a lot of that time they are confiding their frustrations in you because you are a safe place to vent – and then having vented, they go off and feel better, while you are holding the big bag of worry. One of the toughest parts of college parenting is learning to live with our discomfort about our kids’ discomfort. So listen and respond with empathy, know that stress passes, and do your best not to absorb it.

I had forgotten to include Monday’s Letters So Dear, which had been sent to the Class of 2023. Read it here.

To lighten the mood, here are more finals memes. Today is all about procrastination, though I do love this first one about group projects.

group project joke joke - student writing like Hamilton running out of time because their essay is due joke - how google distracts us from work joke - write a little, look at the internet a lot Joke - Jim from the office with a pie chart on procrastination joke about students who should be studying sending each other memes

— by Betsy Chapman, Ph.D. (’92, MA ’94)

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