15 Ways to Get Out of Finals

1) Bury yourself in Harvard Yard and wait for “Archaeology of Harvard Yard” students to find you in twenty years.

2) Load up on a full plate of your dining hall’s Boston Baked Scrod—a surprise in every mouthful could lead to conveniently timed irritable bowel syndrome.

3) Turn off the heat, open the window, and get naked—we call this frostbite for a cause.

4) Participate in a sleep deprivation experiment for psych labs—check into UHS for drooling and hallucinations.

5) Want a free pass on your term paper? Read Faust’s new Civil War book, visit her at Mass Hall, and ask for your own personal Emancipation Proclamation.

6) Play up your “skin allergies”— make sure the rash shows up in a highly visible, not-so-private place.

7) Make a donation—a big donation. Make sure Harvard knows it’s from you.

8) Rub Hemp Granola crumbs into your contacts—temporary blindness trumps final exam.

9) Ingest several pounds of raw, room temperature cookie dough—if Salmonella doesn’t get you, queasiness will.

10) Poster gum yourself to the floor—claim physical and mental incompetency.

11) Get too friendly with the squirrels in the yard—rabies is the new scabies.

12) Have your friends duct tape you to the giant magnifying glass in the Science Center and claim you were ambushed by overachieving premeds.

13) Burn holes into your T-shirt, douse yourself with water and claim you just prevented a case of spontaneous human combustion.

14) Stage an accident involving superglue, bare skin, and a furniture item (toilet seat not recommended).

15) Remember, if all else fails, flunking finals is not a disaster—it’s a “character building” experience that translates into a great anecdote for your Goldman Sachs interview.