2022: Year of the Finals

Principal Seung Yu is woken up by the sound of piercing screams.

Startled, he emerges from the warm comfort of his bed. He tries to focus on the screaming but doing so only worsens his violently throbbing headache. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees his phone light up with notifications flooding the screen. Next to his phone, an open bottle of champagne is dripping onto the floor. “Ugh, my phone is soaked,” he mumbles to himself. He turns the bottle upright and checks his phone.

The first thing he sees is the date: January 1, 2022. Yu thinks, “That’s right, New Year’s Day! Explains the champagne and the raging hangover I have from last night.” Then, he checks his e-mail, expecting the regular slew of “Happy New Year” messages and COVID-19 notifications. As he scans the subject lines of the e-mails, he notices a strange pattern.

“what the fudge is the new finals calendar”

“Concerning the Finals Schedule: is it really all of 2022 please no i want to go home and see my family”

“respond to our emails about finals ik you’re reading this”

Confused, Yu asks, “What did I do?”

He notices everyone replying to one particular e-mail—one that he has no recollection of writing, but apparently sent out.

Sent January 1, 2022 at 1:51 a.m.

From: Seung Yu

To: Brian Moran, Manuel Simon

Bcc: classof2022@stuy.edu, classof2023@stuy.edu, classof2024@stuy.edu, classof2025@stuy.edu

Subject: take the L

Dear peeps of Sutuvensat hi skool,

To celbrate this new year for the Stuyvesnsanrnt comunity and to fill my soul with hearty kidz’ tears, I, Princepal Yu, hereby declare 2022 to be Year of the Finals. Rather than having finalz and regents week, we will have finals and regents yEAR. For one year, we will have nothing butt exams. This unique method of edukation will set Strnvesent above other trash hi skools and cement our spot as the top high skool in the nation!

Pls see attacked calandar for further finormation.

Sincerly, Principal Yu

Yu gasps in horror. “How drunk was I last night?”

He quickly opens up the exams calendar and is greeted with something that should be banned by the Geneva Conventions. The computer science final, once non-existent, now stretches over the entire month of July, leaving no room for eating or sleeping. The Global Studies test entails traveling to Rome, resurrecting Julius Caesar, and submitting a firsthand account of his death, all of which will be handwritten in traditional Chinese. The AP Microeconomics final is a spoken exam that involves listing every country’s currency and calculating how much of each currency is needed to pull a Jungkook photocard from “Butter.” “Okay, that one’s actually a good idea,” Yu notes.

The continued screaming from outside practically splits Yu’s skull in half. He angrily rips apart his ugly denim curtains and prepares to scream at the neighborhood kids outside but is taken aback. Standing all over his dying lawn are dozens of students, raising signs and barricading the front door with textbooks. His fear mounts as he realizes that students found his house address. How? The Computer Science department must be teaching some form of tracking or witchcraft. Yu looks at the teenagers, desperately searching for even a shred of humanity. There is none; all he sees are tired, dead eyes brimming with rage. And that screaming—is that screaming? No, it’s chanting.

“DOWN WITH FINALS! DOWN WITH FINALS!”

It is not a happy new year for Yu.