It’s that time of year again at Saint Louis University. Lights are strung on the archways, the weather dips below the 30-degree mark, and students begin nervously humming under their breath. That’s right-it’s finals time.

With the number of projects, exams and papers piling up, students should make an effort not to fret about their course load overload. Take a deep breath . Finals are still a few days away and papers can be written in 12 easy steps.

Step 1: Attend class and get the assignment from your professor. This step seems simple enough. However, any student past his first college semester can tell you that making class a daily ritual is easier said than done. Professors generally hand out the assignment one week prior to the due date.

Step 2: Place the assignment sheet in your course folder, which is color-coordinated with your course notebook. This can only happen during the first week of school. By the second week of the semester, students have lost the color-corresponding notebook and cram the assignment sheet into any area of their backpack with room to do so. These actions, of course, make the next step important.

Step 3: Lose the assignment sheet. This is quite easy to do with disorganized backpacks, messy dorm rooms and scatterbrained students in general.

Step 4: Find out the due date and length of paper from the person who sits next to you in class and fudge the remainder of the guidelines. It is important never to tell the professor that you have lost the assignment sheet or, worse, admit that you have not yet begun the assignment. While teachers themselves have the luxury of waiting to distribute assignments, grade exams and return papers, students should never procrastinate if they hope to make it in the “real world” someday.

However, any research done earlier than 12 hours prior to class time will probably be outdated. The evening before the paper is due, begin researching the assignment. Teachers like research to be new, fresh and cutting-edge.

Step 5: Clear your mind by watching a movie on the Billiken Blockbuster Cinema. Unfortunately, the movie schedule does not correspond with the library hours, which places you just after midnight and thus the closing of the library.

Step 6: Not to worry! You will simply research the paper online. You decide to have a pizza to reward yourself for quick thinking and remaining calm with a fast approaching deadline. You’re going to be awesome in the real world when you don’t break a sweat even with the threat of a deadline or an international crisis.

Step 7: Enjoy your pizza! After the pizza arrives and you barely scrape together enough money to purchase it, you stiff the delivery guy on a tip. After stressing about your financial situation, you decide it would be nice to drop an e-mail to mom and dad, as it is past 1 a.m. and too late to give them a ring on the telephone

Step 8: Check your e-mail. You never know if the professor has e-mailed any last-minute guideline changes to the assignment.

Step 9: Take a nap. The pizza made you drowsy. When one’s body is suffering from fatigue, the mind is in a poor state to write the paper. You decide to take a power nap and wake up around 4 a.m. Just enough time to get the paper finished and proofread by a friend.

Step 10: Treat yourself to a beer. It’s nearing 5 a.m., and you realize that the hallway is quiet. Everyone else on your floor has gone to sleep, and you’re beginning to stress a bit about the paper. In college, students learn to wash away their problems with a little Bud Light. The slight buzz also helps the creative juices of the mind churn faster. Unfortunately, it can also make you pass out. This will be the best paper ever; you just have to get started.

Step 11: Oh no! Wake up at 6:30 a.m., 1.5 hours prior to class. It’s time to take care of business: Sit at your computer and write the entire paper without getting up, not even to go to the bathroom.

Step 12: Go to class. Even though you’re 20 minutes late and haven’t showered or changed clothes from the night before, the professor is ecstatic to see you. You cower in the back row in a hat to cover your greasy hair and hide the bags under your eyes.

Return to your dorm room and go to sleep. After pulling an “all-nighter” like that, you have to skip the remainder of your classes to recover.

Professors are such slave drivers; how can they assign work that is physically impossible to complete unless students sacrifice their sleep schedules and social life?

You did well, and now you’re ready for anything that a professor throws your way-like the final!

Maria Baran is a junior studying communication.