Relevant Literary Quotes for Finals

So, You may have noticed at this point that I'm pretty fond of literature. I think literature holds an invaluable role in our lives and can expertly capture a variety of emotions and experiences...including finals. The following list includes a few quotations that I think can totally apply to finals, but keep in mind that 99% of these are stretched or taken out of context in some way in order to make them work:

“But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.”
– Robert Frost (Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
This pretty much sums up the days leading up to finals, you have studying to do which translates into several hours of studying before you sleep (Especially if you decide to postpone the whole sleeping thing until after finals are over)

“‘If I am going to be drowned-if I am going to be drowned-if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?’”
– The Correspondent (Steven Crane, The Open Boat)
Being so close to the end of the semester and failing at finals is a lot like being in a lifeboat close to shore and being unable to reach dry land (This is what Stephen Crane's story: "The Open Boat" is all about). The good news is that finals are usually a whole lot less difficult that you mentally expected them to be.

“So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.”
–Langston Hughes (Mother to Son)
I think Hughes has got this one covered. Basically, don't quit just because things are a little hard. Also, I think it is a whole lot better to fail in a valiant blaze of effort than it is to quit.

“But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although
he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.”
–Elizabeth Bishop (The Man-Moth)
I don't think any of us are going to fail, but even if we do, we will not be harmed by it, we'll just have to brush ourselves off and try again.

“In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.”
– E.A. Robinson (Richard Corey)
This is how we might feel about that fellow classmate who seems to have everything together and is calmly filling out his exam. He might look composed, but I'll let you in on a secret: That guy is just as freaked out as you are because....

“I had over-prepared the event,
that much was ominous."
– Ezra Pound (Villanelle: The Psychological Hour)
Even if you think you have refreshed yourself on everything, you worry that the most obscure question about the concept that you understand the least will be on there.

“And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back,”
– Robert Frost (The Road Not Taken)
This is what happens when you have a multiple choice question. You four choices and have already eliminated two of them as joke responses that don't work at all...but you you're stuck...was it "A" or "C"? Once you fill in that scantron, it's pretty hard to go back and change your question and then there's the fact that there will probably be a later question that builds on whatever answer you put here so you could wind up getting two wrong...what to do, what to do

“The clock indicates the moment-but what does eternity indicate?”
– Walt Whitman (Song of Myself)
So when I'm filling out those exam essays, I know that I am limited by time constraints but yet this doesn't stop me from spending half of my allotted time philosophically pondering what I will write (And the other half actually writing it)

“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces,”
– Robert Frost (Desert Places)
Don't let that empty space where your essay is supposed to go and the steady ticking of the clock freak you out. That empty space is just waiting for a brilliant essay from you.

“so, through our desolation,
thoughts stir, inspiration stalks us
through gloom:”
– H.D. (Walls Do Not Fall)
This is that amazing sense of inspiration you get for your essays when you are somehow able to write an answer that you are proud of using the seven minutes you have left after all that philosophizing.

“And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,”
– T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
No matter how limited your time is for this exam, there always seems to be enough time to second guess yourself...

“I sympathize. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late”
– Robert Frost (Death of a Hired Man)
This is what happens when you have just turned in your exam and are walking out of the classroom and you have a sudden epiphany about one of the answers that you put on the test or you come up with a brilliant supporting evidence to add to your in-class essay...too late to change it now

"Yet the frame held:
we passed the flame: we wonder
what saved us? what for?”
–H.D. (Walls Do Not Fall)
You did it! You survived those finals! Now, what challenges will you face next? Is there a more ominous obstacle hidden somewhere?

"so what good are your scribblings?
this - we take them with us”
–H.D. (Walls Do Not Fall)
You may have had some tense times in that class but you'll also get to take something valuable with you: Knowledge (Also any paper that you got to write over the course of the class)

"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (A Psalm of Life)
Sometimes it's hard to wait for your results during that week between your final and your grade posting but every semester I learn again that the valuable part of that class is the knowledge that I took with me the second that I walked out that door.

Happy Finals! I know you'll all do great!