Close

Around this time of year many students put all vital life functions on hold and focus on final exams, term papers and the like. Eating, sleeping, bathing and socializing are left on the shore as students dive headfirst into their studies.

Yet most people don’t understand that there is a concept for this, an expression if you will, that is used to explain the biannual phenomenon. It is called “Go Time,” and by reading this paper, you are already violating it.

“Go Time” occurs during that frantic stretch of time prior to the very end of the semester here at Binghamton University. It is based on the premise that after you take a final exam or write a term paper for a course, it is the culmination of your affiliation with that class. This means that after it is submitted, you will never again be required to do any more work; it is all over.

The grades are calculated and your performance is condensed into a letter grade. After that answer sheet leaves your hand or that paper is uploaded to Turnitin.com, the class moves from one you are in to one that you had previously taken and will (hopefully) never take again. You probably won’t feel any different as you cross the crucial threshold, but at that moment the present becomes the past right before your very eyes.

Try to imagine a timeline where your last final this semester is but one place along a continuum that extends from this exact moment through the rest of your life. This test should be toward the very beginning, probably no later than a week away, after which there is the endless expanse of your future years.

It’s obvious that you will live the vast majority of your life after this test is taken. That is, most of whatever you do will occur after the test. Whether it is plowing through eight seasons of “How I Met Your Mother” or raging face at the Rathskeller, there is an infinitely great amount of time to do anything after the exam. You most certainly can do any of these things right now, or even mere minutes before the test — no one is stopping you — but you’ll find much more time to do it afterwards.

This brings us back to “Go Time.” Occurring every semester during the buildup to finals week, it is the mystical, magical realization that every second not spent studying for finals is a second wasted. If you only had an extremely limited amount of time to study for a disproportionally important test, wouldn’t it impel you to put everything you had into acing it?

If there were only five days between now and the due date, would it not make sense to pour your heart and soul into it? Finals are designed to test a student’s capacity to turn all that stress, pressure and knowledge into something meaningful. It’s called a deadline for a reason: after it passes, any attempt to quantify your knowledge, demonstrate your understanding of the material or influence your teacher’s determination of your success in the course becomes wholly insignificant.

You have the next couple of days to earn that A and after that, it is all over. Hindsight may be 20/20, but right now there is no point in looking back. Finals week is upon us, and the clock ticks as you read.

But before you stop reading, know that the most beautiful thing about “Go Time” is that is it only a matter of perspective. For some it holds true, for others it is very easily ignored. One look at Glenn G. Bartle Library nowadays demonstrates who abides by it, just like how one look at State Street will tell you who doesn’t. And while motivation for schoolwork isn’t something commonly found within these pages, it doesn’t take a lot to realize how little time is left between now and that last test. So when the semester is out and the grades come in, the question will have answered itself.

What time is it?