April has started. The school itself seems to twitch and shuffle restlessly as a large and tired mass. Two more months and the blissful road of summer stretches before us. Seniors rejoice because in a week, grades, the constant torment of four years, will be locked, and they may not have to worry about them for five more months! As we draw into the most busy, crammed, and annoying part of the school year, the generally fidgety mood sends a clear message: we students are officially loading the last bullets into our mental rifles.

AP exams, finals, and a mindless barrage of standardized testing. Many students seem to be pressed in books perpetually, the impact of college acceptance-determining grades and scores stamping itself firmly onto their wrinkled foreheads and harassed faces. The pressure’s on, but the timing’s off. If only these tests could’ve planned their attack for a better time, say, a few months ago when we were lucid. But, no, the testing season is far too strategic an offensive army to strike at a convenient time; it’s an enemy that knows when our mental clocks are slowly shutting down. When we start to slacken our grips and wits. We honestly feel like valiant soldiers in a massive war effort, heaving the last of our selves into battle.

Of course, I exaggerate. This time of the year, albeit stressful, is probably the one most remembered by students later on. And at the end, exemptions await many of us; pressures are off and for two blissful weeks in May we can sink into our couches and laugh easily at stupid things. We may be soldiers, but we’re certainly not the doomed Norse gods walking towards the inevitable end of humanity. Yearbooks, prom, watching the seniors graduate. Rewards definitely pepper the end of the year calendar.