Students Fight for Facetime During Finals

 Across campus, students have been struggling to find a balance between getting their daily dose of facetime with the need to write papers and study for exams. Since, as Julia Levenson ’11 admitted, “no one has ever gotten anything done in Novack or on FFB,” students have been forced to retreat to other areas of the library to actually be productive.

However, this has not deterred most students from seeking out the facetime that they deem necessary. Mika Kelly ’11 was forced from her usual spot at a computer on First Floor Berry to the sixth floor stacks to write a 20-page paper for PHIL 23: Bullshitting. Since she was unable to get her usual amount of facetime in the stacks, she compensated by, “making a ‘facetime lap’ through 3rd, 2nd and 1st floor Berry plus Novack after each page I write. It’s not ideal but it get’s the job done. I make sure to talk obnoxiously loud to at least one person on each floor so I get noticed.”

Other students resorted to wardrobe changes to gain attention during finals period. Stanley Malone ’11 retreated to second floor Berry for the quiet it offered and managed to land the table in the window overlooking the Berry reception area. To ensure that he was noticed, he donned his fraternity’s spring t-shirt with the sleeves cut off along with a red bandana to “really catch people’s eye.”

Perhaps the most innovative way to secure finals facetime was devised by Jon Harris ’13. While confined to a cubicle in the back of fourth floor Berry while studying for BIO 6: Death, he initially planned to make up for lost facetime by blitzing out to all of campus about some obscure lost object, such as a broken Prada umbrella, but decided that would be too far fetched. He also thought about blitzing to his classes asking for notes, but he thought it would make him look like he had no friends.

Harris instead went to his inbox and found an innocuous old blitz that he had received along with several hundred other recipients and “accidentally” replied all. He explained the details of his plan, “I made sure to make it look like I intended to only reply to the sender so I could play it off as an accident. I sent it around noon on the Friday of finals, when literally all of campus was on blitz. I also made sure to include some obscure skill that I have, just so people would remember me. I’d say it worked to perfection.”

Harris’s blitz garnered 16 replies, which he turned into “Four dinners and one potential hookup” through flitzing.

Still some less creative students reverted to studying on first floor Berry to maximize facetime. When asked how he managed to do work while still amassing facetime, Javier Lopez ’12 did not answer due to his noise cancelling headphones. However, Maria Solomon ’12, wearing three tri-delt articles of clothing, gladly volunteered that she was done with finals but “Couldn’t think of a better place to be this afternoon.”

This Dunyun reporter attempted to locate some ‘10s in the library to report on their techniques for garnering extra facetime. Unfortunately, none could be found.