Psych! This article has nothing to do with Christmas at Kenwood™. It was just a shameless promotion of the event, which will be awesome, according to several unbiased sources.1

What I’d really like to do today is provide a little stress relief for all you studious students out there who are filled with holiday cheer (and perhaps panic). Let this little story be a reminder that although things may stink, it will all be ok in the end.

Last week on Monday, I left my backpack in a classroom by accident after class.

In my defense, I was on a beeline to track down a package—my instincts for chocolate blocked out everything else from my mind.

Following the success of my chocolate hunt and the ensuing feast, I looked around to discover that my backpack was nowhere to be seen.

After a minute or two of discernment, I hustled as fast as my chocolate-laden stomach would allow back to the classroom. I hunted high and low. Then even higher and even lower. Alas, to no avail. It was gone, as if whisked away by spectral custodians of a different dimension.

However, upon examination, the custodial closet yielded no bounty. Nor did the lost and found in the Welcome Center. Nor did any of the other increasingly desperate searches give any kind of clue as to where my faithful friend had gone.

Resigned, I went on Thanksgiving Break. All the while, I longed for the embrace of its straps secure and loving around my shoulders, and the warming of my back with the loving touch of its padded mesh.

I reluctantly set about copying Organic Chemistry reaction cards to replace those I had lost, taking care to avoid staining them too much with the bitter salt water gushing from my eyes.

Somehow, I forded through and overcame my struggles. I returned to Goshen a new man, ready once more to take on my schoolwork.

I had copied my reaction cards and obtained a new (but not as good, obviously) backpack. I could finally see, after days of despair, the light at the end of the dark and misery-filled tunnel.

Then on the first night I got back, I looked at the coat rack and my #@%*& backpack was sitting there, smirking at me.

Turns out, I had just forgotten where I had left it in the house, not in the classroom. And thus ends the saga of my forgetfulness.

To apply this analogy to academics: Don’t worry! You may be stressed out like me, but in the end it will turn out you just forgot where you put your, uh, knowledge for finals, and it will turn up eventually!

So just kick back and relax as the semester ends. All the solutions to your problems will just appear on your coat rack.

1Who may or may not live in Kenwood.