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" Finals finished up nicely. My last night at college was spent pulling an all-nighter with a group of friends in a study room that we &amp;quot;adopted&amp;quot; on the Friday night before my econ final, after the media library closed (which is where we usually study). To be honest, it was more fun than you&amp;#039;d think \u2014 we brought our pillows and blankets in there for comfort, and we were able to link our laptops to a projector screen so that we could watch YouTube videos during study breaks. Corny as it may sound, the fact that we were all together, that we were suffering as a collective unit, made it easier to study and stay focused on not socializing. (Although of course, toward the end of the night, we goofed off a lot, but that was more because we were living on the little sleep that we had all gotten for that entire week.)  The next morning was warm and sunny and breakfast was hazy and lazy. Considering that I like eating big meals before tests and breakfasts at Rice are usually amazing, I found it depressing that my last breakfast at Rice was stale waffles and an apple. Trailing into the large lecture hall where my final was held was even more depressing. I knew that I didn&amp;#039;t know my stuff nearly as well as I would have liked, so after I put my backpack down, I wandered outside and ogled all the sunlight, partially out of the hallucinogenic state I was in due to the lack of sleep, but also because it made me feel hope, knowing that the dread I felt of this test would be over in a mere three hours... Three hours later, when I put down my pencil, this wave of epic relief (THE MOST EPIC RELIEF) undulated through me and I was like... WOW! THAT WASN&amp;#039;T THAT BAD! I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it \u2014 I was alive. Now, that may sound melodramatic, but it&amp;#039;s really how I felt. During that whole week, I had eaten next to nothing and probably got only eight hours of sleep. TOTAL. For the whole week. Yes. You read that correctly.  For the whole two weeks before finals, after Thanksgiving, all I wanted to do was go home. But suddenly, through that relief of finals being over, as I stepped out into the sunlight after hugging my econ teacher goodbye (yes, I was that happy and that dramatic)... I didn&amp;#039;t want to leave. All I wanted was food, sleep and another weekend with my Rice friends, so that I could wake up on Monday morning and go to class all over again (WITHOUT the whole finals thing... I hate finals now). Upon putting down my pencil, I felt a weird reluctantly-relieved-happy-melancholy-joy state. That night, I left campus (reluctantly), and now, I&amp;#039;m home. I&amp;#039;ll tell you this \u2014 as much as finals suck, winter break in college is equally amazing on the opposite end of the spectrum. You know how in high school you still had assignments to do over the two-week winter break? Well, unless you go to Princeton (or another school where you have finals AFTER winter break, YUCK!), you don&amp;#039;t have to do ANYTHING for school! You just have around a month of absolute free time to do whatever you want. On that note, think about this: Say you had time to just chill out and do whatever you want &amp;amp;amp;dash what would you do? Give me some recommendations for activities for my winter break in the comments below!!! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/life/school/advice/a13157/finals-are-finally-over/>