The life of a zombie

Warning: Might contain mild exaggerations due to a semester of writing a BA paper for which I was extremely limited in choosing a topic and reversed culture shock. So, ye be warned of the drama in this post! ;-)

Rays of sunlight stroke the corpse's cold cheeks, as he sleeps the slumber of the dead. The alarm clock rings. With a groan the zombie comes to life and silences the alarm. An imprint in the shape of a rectangle across the creature's face still marks the spot where it fell asleep on a book before dragging itself to bed. Its head falls back onto the pillow as the realization creeps into the zombie's mind: It's another one of those days!

Well, can you guess who this zombie might have been in the life it had before deadlines crushed him and forced him into unsociability? As a student, you will know these awful final weeks of deadlines over deadlines threatening you with their impending doom. Deliciously spiced up with exams, the workload tests your self-confidence and tears at your sanity.

If you are as unlucky as I was this semester, you might not even have the slightest interest in writing those papers and just do it to get it over and be done with it. This is, of course, not the best attitude to go into the madness that are the final weeks of the semester. Seriously doubting the purpose and usefulness of what I was about to write, I began my life as a zombie among other paper-writing and exam-studying undead creatures, all of them heading for the one tomb where we could all hang out and suffer together: the library. In there, the days go by as slow as an eternity spent in a grave. Always sleepy and in deep thought, with mixed feelings of panic and total lack of any other motivation, most of the zombies force themselves to go down there.

Entering the library, the reek of agony, fear, trepidation and pure boredom hits your nose like the air in a dusty mausoleum. Here and there, another groan might escape a zombie's mouth by way of greeting, as he drops down into a chair to begin his work. And yet another sound of sheer agony can be heard, when the torture that is citing hits with full force! Each of the arguments needs to be undermined and hours are spent on a well-written paragraph of 300 to 500 words. After about every second sentence the source and your own argument must be checked against each other. The word 'painstaking' is not even close to describe this ordeal.

Then there's also the awkward moment when you sit there and finally wrote about 1000 words, go over what you just sucked out of your brain and can't help thinking: "Oh my God! That's a whole lot of crap!" This is often outwardly expressed by a heavy sigh or frustrated head-banging on the table - the perfect image of a brainless zombie!

What's left to say now is that the only way to survive these desperate times is to EAT OTHER PEOPLE'S BRAINS!!! Excuse me, uhm, I meant KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON!

PS: After this post, don't get the wrong impression that I hate libraries, because that would be totally wrong! ;-) Still love books and love the magic of libraries, but in those desperate times a they turn into rather gloomy places.

So how do you survive those desperate times? Let me know in the comments!