The Infamous Finals Flu

by Stephanie Fricker

It starts out slow, than progresses at rapid pace. A little discomfort turns into an overly dramatic and seemingly unbearable circumstance. Your throat starts to scratch, your nose starts to swell, and the realization hits you faster than a high- speed train. You, my friend, are catching a cold. The best part of this common illness is it’s timing. This time it happens to be on the most important week of each semester, finals week. Not only do you suffer the regular symptoms seen in the common cold but you also suffer the extra stress and pressure of having to ace that AP final with a runny nose. Each year I find that more and more relatively healthy students happen to get a cold right around the week of finals. Is it a curse? Is your mind playing an awful trick on you? Or is it simply the fact that a combination of stress and hormones leaves your immune system out of whack? Stress can do a lot of strange things to your body like increase or lose appetite, hair loss, and even fainting spells. It is not a far fetched thought to believe that stress becomes the main culprit for these poorly timed illnesses.  So how does one deal with the finals flu? Well they prepare themselves with the cold essentials with everything from Niquil to Kleenex and the mind set that one can still succeed with what seems like agonizing symptoms. Arm yourselves with Kleenex kids because here comes finals and more importantly here comes the flu!