The yearly CMU black market finals guide
Welcome, dear one, to the last academic guide you will ever need.
In this trying season of finals and term projects – when time is short, energy wanes, and we remain besieged by our thanksgiving-fueled, Celsius-charged gut microbiomes – conventional academics are no longer viable. This compendium, brought to you after immense struggle and a dash of bloodshed with campus security, is your ticket through. Be warned all you heart-faint, law-abiding, and poorly-hydrated souls: these strategies are exhausting and cruel. But master them, and you will emerge from your exam rooms a conqueror.
Steal, steal, steal. The treasure map to exams lies right under your nose: in lectures. Don’t restrict your exposure to material to a wan few hours a week. Whether you can sneak in a powerful laptop equipped with the most egregious of LaTex instances or a timeless relic of paper and pencil, extract every drop these sessions offer. Siphoning material busies the hands, engages the mind, and fills your vault of insights until the entire course is your accomplice in success.
Even at this thirteenth hour, with lectures dwindling and exams encroaching, steal like your life depends upon it. Butter up your friends with a careful bribe – a kindly worded text – and their guard may slip, leaving their own carefully compiled information to your mercy. Slink into professors’ hours with sweet nothings of mostly informed questions, and they might unwittingly arm you with the cinching answers. Steal from online guides, antiquated Quizlets, Greek siblings if you can and Pitt comrades if you must.
Piracy isn’t just a crime, but a divine path: for the proactive, the courageous, and the financially successful, it is the path to victory.
Keep friends close, and flakers closer. University is not a garden party; it is a court of knives. We each must decide ourselves when to sheathe, when to brandish, and when to press steel (metaphorically, of course) to the throat of our peers. By now, group project pre-selection has passed, and ideally, you’ve secured honorable compatriots amongst the untrustworthy and the feckless. Yet for those less fortunate, shackled non-communicators, deadline-huggers, and other such chips on the wheel of progress, be unrelenting in your vigilance.
Hound your partners with ceaseless check-ins, draw them in with saccharine invitation to group work sessions. Feed them exciting updates and reassurances of grandeur. Many a “bad partner” need only guidance, structure, or an unmistakable – yet comforting – eye over the shoulder. Draw them in and hold them close, too tightly to escape your watch.
But when diplomacy falters – when your flaker retreats to the shadows of silence and hostility – you must prepare for war. Keep meticulous archives: document every ignored plea, every shattered deadline, every contribution or blinding lack thereof. Step boldly into their positions and cover their work: let effort sing of your sacrifice. Find absolution in your reliable teammates, or the overarching authority of your professors. With this, your adversary will find themselves entangled in a web of gutted alibis and dead promises, excised from the project that would have saved their grade. Come presentation day, stand tall. Watch your honest partners gleam and your adversary crumble to dust. This university is yours to conquer.
Hone your self to a bleeding edge. This is the most critical of all. An empty vessel cannot pour, an empty basket cannot feed, and you can expend no healthy effort – to say nothing of besting finals – without being armed, stocked, and cared for. Rest long and well. Sleep is not a luxury, but a whetstone; it relaxes the muscles, sharpens the mind, ensures you another fight and another victory. Sleep unabashedly and callously; obliterate any obstacles between you and your blankets. Let rest be the foundation of your strength. Eat richly and with intent. Beyond mere sustenance, let food be a source of comfort and joy. Habitualists, savor familiar routines and the now-scarce relaxation they afford you. Experimentalists, let new tastes be a welcome reprieve from academic drudgery. Steal what pleasure you can, especially from these rituals of sustenance. Collude with friends. Breathe deep the cold air. Brutally arrange your schedule, and carve out inviolable pockets for your personal pursuits. Guard your pleasures, the spoils of your struggle.
With that, dear one, your training is complete. There is a world beyond the final, and with this, you will soar to it.