This year, Dartboard will celebrate the long intersession while skiing in Vermont, rowing in North Carolina or perhaps getting a tan on the sands of Panama Beach. Or, perhaps more likely, Dartboard will discover a new meaning of the word "chillin"' while sitting in an underheated dorm working on a thesis or hunting down a summer job. No matter how it gets spent, though, nothing could be more welcome after ten days of exams than seven days of real vacation.

But next year, Dartboard will barely have the time to hiccup after our exams end. Do the math: seven days this year, two days next year. Eloquently put, it sucks--and we've seen it before. Intersession 2000 will actually be a genetically and administrationally engineered clone of the two-day wonder that was Intersession 1998. Even at a four-year college, institutional memory isn't that short.

For several semesters now, we've heard nary a mew from the administration about holding exams before winter break and starting school a little earlier. Dartboard loudly roars for this change--or else we say, give us a week every year.

There are Ten Minutes Remaining

During reading period, which Dartboard largely spent reading women's magazines (Page 118: "How to Trim Those Ugly Thighs"; Page 119: "Quiz: Do You Have Low Self-Esteem?"), and during exam period itself, which Dartboard is largely spending removing the plastic wrap from textbooks for tomorrow's exams, it's easy to forget the real determining factor in every-one's exam experience.

Clearly it isn't how well you prepare-the academic success rate of pre-exam plastic wrap removal is far too great for that. It's not your grasp of the material or the quality of your breakfast or even how much sleep you got the night before. No, your final grade will be determined by a single unpredictable factor: your exam proctor.

Consider the facts of the situation. You have spent the past semester in the company of your professor and TF. No matter what that annoying kid in your section may believe, they are the only authorities in the course. So naturally, when you walk into your final exam and see a large-eared elfish man in a hot-pink sweater and Poindexter glasses who vaguely resembles your junior high substitute teacher, it's hard to take him seriously.

But the proctors take their task very seriously. And it shows. No professor ever took so much delight in writing (no, inscribing) the time on the board every five minutes in eardrum-scraping chalk marks, never noticing the clock hanging two feet above the blackboard. Or consider the relish with which they announce that "Writing after the exam is considered CHEATING, and proctors will DOCUMENT ALL INCIDENTS after the exam." (Never happened to Dartboard.)

Or the joy, the sheer animal ecstasy, they take in shattering our concentration as we scribble out the final brilliant conclusions of our essays to tell us that "There are TEN MINUTES remaining in this examination. For the remainder of the ten minutes that remain while the exam remains, no one may leave the room until the remaining ten minutes that remain while the exam remains, no one may leave the room until the remaining ten minutes of the examination no longer remain in the remainder of the ten minutes remaining..."

Of course, once the exam is over, we are far too tired to protest or even remember these people who seem to venture down from the outer reaches of the solar system in order to administer our finals. Yet every year, they return, renewing our faith that there is indeed life after college and that people exist in the universe who do not care about exams.

Your Post-Exam Horoscope

Today is a day for planning your life. The stars are randomized into your house and are hanging out with their blockmates who look favorably upon you. You are freed from a great labor today. You have finally passed the QRR as a sophomore. You will rejoice. Your roommates will stop being condescending. You can multiply fractions. Calculators are no longer enigmatic devices used to write "Boob" (8008). The lies about your "stats" exam can stop.

But proceed cautiously. You have one elective left and Af-Am 10 does not count for your concentration. Soon you will graduate into a world that uses math. The planets are summoning you to...grad school. For Folklore and Mythology. Then, you will write horoscopes. Marry someone who remembers how to carry digits during subtraction.