We’re sad to report that finals season is once again upon us, and the only thing that could make this worse is remembering that Donald Trump won the election. But here at 4E, we have decided to embrace reality and take these two terrifying things in stride by finding a way to combine them. With that in mind, here are the five stages of writing a final paper, as told by our future First Lady, Melania Trump.
Phase 1: Confidence
You stroll onto Lau 2 with your squad, feeling good and looking even better. You pick up your usual vanilla latte and lemon poppy-seed muffin from Midnight, snag a prime table near the vending machines, and you’re ready to crush this paper. You’ve totally got this.
Phase 2: Distraction
You’ve got plenty of time. This paper isn’t due for another ten hours. That’s like a week in college time. Before you start writing, you can definitely afford to spend five minutes stalking that guy from your French class on Facebook or searching for some fire memes to retweet.
Phase 3: Realization
Okay, so five minutes has somehow turned into four hours and all you’ve done is people-watch and take a Buzzfeed quiz to find out what Zoey 101 character you are. Time to get serious. You log on to Blackboard to look at the topic for the first time. Wait… What is this paper supposed to be about? It slowly dawns on you that this paper might not be as easy as you initially thought.
Phase 4: Desperation
Ok, it’s officially time to panic. What is going on? When did the professor ever talk about any of this? You are really regretting your decision to skip so many lectures in favor of waiting in line for a crepe at the farmer’s market. At the height of your anxiety, you seriously start to consider how serious this whole “no plagiarism” rule is. Will anyone really notice if you copy and paste your entire paper from Wikipedia?
Phase 5: Acceptance
There’s no more time for panicking. You’ve got an hour left, and if you type fast enough, you’re pretty sure you can still pull a solid B-. Don’t let the fact that you have no idea what is going on stop you! Just make things up! Literally say anything. If this election cycle has taught us one thing, it’s that you can blatantly lie and people will still believe you:
So there you have it: the five phases of writing a research paper, as told by First Lady-elect Melania Trump. From all of us here at 4E, good luck with your finals and with the next four years.
Gifs: giphy.com
