The five stages of grief were originally designed to explain the very difficult emotional journey an individual undertakes when a loved one dies. But, we at the Clog know that Berkeley students are experiencing a different sort of death this week. RRR week heralds in the death of our dreams, our health and our GPA. As RRR week and finals wreak havoc on our carefully constructed collegiate lives, we undertake our own mourning process as we go through the five stages of RRR week.

Denial

RRR week begins in the same way for almost every student — we pretend like the week off from school means a week off for fun and hanging out, rather than a week off to study. Most likely, you spend the weekend and first couple days of RRR week specifically not touching your textbooks. At this point, you’re treating the week off from school like a vacation, rather than a week to relearn an entire semester’s worth of knowledge.

Anger

Around the third day of RRR week, you realize that you need to start studying. As soon as you sit down to study, however, you will probably come to the conclusion that you didn’t begin studying soon enough. You’re most likely going to be pretty angry with yourself about this seemingly massive mistake.

Bargaining

During this stage of RRR week, Grade Calculator is probably the most visited website on your browser. You are desperately calculating and recalculating both your grade and the time you have remaining during RRR week in an attempt to figure out the absolute minimum grade you need on the final to get the grade you want. So what if you need 102 percent on a curved final to get an A in the class? It’s not totally impossible, right?

Depression

The sheer magnitude of the material you need to know coupled with the small amount of time you have to learn it will probably hit you pretty hard around Friday or Saturday of RRR week. This will lead to excessive amounts of time crying in Main Stacks, announcing that you’re dropping out of college and general feelings of sadness. Ah, finals. What a wonderful time.

Acceptance

You have no choice but to take your finals. There is only so much knowledge that you can fit inside your head in a week. This is your fate.