For most, finals week is the most stressful time of the school year.

The utter thought of final exams often reminds students of that ever-familiar turn-of-the-semester sleepless frenzy.

Lots of final exam horror stories are floating around out there.

And it’s true, mistakes are much worse when impending stress and pressure are involved, rendering those mistakes much worse than they would be in a less important situation.

Well, one such instance occurred with junior English major, Stephanie Walker.

“Freshmen year, my roommate and I thought that we could get away with not studying for finals, like most freshmen do, and spent our studying hours drinking,” Walker said. “Needless to say, my economy and philosophy finals didn’t turn out too well. In fact, I remember writing on my philosophy final nothing but ‘please don’t fail me.'”

Aside from shuffling priorities, there’s the students who study and study, but somehow don’t make the grade.

One such tough-luck story involves senior political science major, Anthony Becker.

“I got a D on my college algebra final last year only missing a C by 3 percent, and I had to take it all over again. It’s one of those prerequisites I need to take to graduate,” Becker said. “And it blows cause I’m terrible with math.”

Too many students have things like this happen to them, where they miss out on getting that grade they need ever so slightly, or they may decide to occupy themselves with something else rather than hitting the books.

Whatever it may be, situations do occur for a lot of students that create massive stress, and in turn, affect that student’s ability to perform his/her best.

In Kelly Kawa’s experience, a sophomore communication studies major, oversleeping was the cause of her distress.

“I had this one final for my film class, where we had to write three papers. It started at 9 a.m., and I didn’t wake up ’til 10 a.m., so I had to rush to school and I only had like 30 minutes to write three papers. Needless to say, I failed the final,” Kawa said. “It was really embarrassing walking in really late, because we all had laptops and I had to try three different ones before I got one to work.”

Senior family consumer science/merchandising major, Jen Johnson had a completely different experience in her Spanish class her freshman year.

“Well, we had a few different teachers for our Spanish class. Our original teacher passed away. We had substitutes in and out,” Johnson said. “And I ended up getting a 79 on the final and my teacher gave me a 79 for the class, she gave me a C. So I appealed it because of all the different teachers that went through. I ended up getting it (B) after a long time, but it was a nightmare, just because we had three or four teachers that semester.”

What about the students who stay awake and study all day and all night?

Well, one such student explained his final exams story in full detail.

Junior psychology major, Levi Bulgar said that his past final exams situations were some of the most stressful times in his life.

“Well, last year, second semester, after they did the 7th Street Underground project, a whole bunch of us on student government decided to just crash down there and play capture the flag outside until three in the morning just to kind of like, get a little bit of stress relief,” Bulgar said.

“I had one of my classes where my teacher screwed up the exam date on the syllabus and never changed it in class,” Bulgar said. “I guess I must have missed that day. So, I find out at 4:30 a.m. that I had a final at eight. I thought it was going to be on Thursday instead of Tuesday, so I had to study like crazy.”

And for him, the final exams’ stress didn’t stop there.

“The semester before, I didn’t go to sleep for three full days. I was up 72 hours straight, slept for about five hours, then up for another 72 hours straight. It was honestly one of the craziest finals experiences ever,” Bulgar said.

“Not to mention I was dealing with a car accident that I got into second semester. Between that, finals, student elections and Greek week, I was fried,” Bulgar said. With a deep breath of relief, he concluded his experiences by saying, “I never want to be there again.”