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The Coldness of Finals Week
by Alex Andy Phuong

This story began during the cold winter month of December in 2016.  During her last semester in college, a student named Anna was diligently preparing for final exams.  She was an English Major, but was nothing like Anastasia Steele from Fifty Shades of Grey.  Instead, she would never flirt with any of the college boys because of her dedication to academic excellence.  She was a bit melancholic about school ending soon, but she did her best to be optimistic.

She was preparing for a final exam for the British literature course during winter break by studying works by Charles Dickens.  She loved A Christmas Carol ever since she saw the Disney adaptation with Uncle Scrooge as a duck.  She simply adored Dickens even though he was verbose at times.  (He actually had to be wordy because that was how he made money back then.)  Anna looked forward to the New Year because she was excited about finishing her Bachelor of Arts in English.

Then the final exam came.  She accidentally misread her syllabus, and thought that she had to do her final exam on A Christmas Carol.  To her surprise, she actually had to write a timed essay on Great Expectations!  Shocked with horror, Anna took some deep breaths, and did her best to recall the two film versions that she saw in high school.  She saw the classic black-and-white version that David Lean directed in 1946.  She also remembered seeing the 1998 modernized version, which starred Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow.  Nevertheless, she just took some deep breaths, and did her best to answer the prompt.  The prompt basically asked to analyze the title, and she ended her essay by writing about how achieving a sense of human dignity is man's greatest expectation.

The semester ended, and Anna did receive her degree in February 2017 after her (somewhat) disastrous experience during her last final exam ever.  Unfortunately, she earned a "B" in her British literature class, but Anna did her best to not complain.  In fact, she was a lot like Elsa's dorky sister from the animated hit Frozen.  Anna simply accepted the fact that things happen sometimes, and she celebrated finishing college by singing the song “Let It Go” at a restaurant that had a “Disney Karaoke Night.”  Instead of the singing the last line of the Oscar-winning song, she simply sang, “Finals never bothered me anyway!”