Typical Exeter Weekend
By DIYA SANDEEP ‘28 and ANNIE ZHU ‘28
It’s 5:30 p.m. You sit in H-Block, trying not to seem too eager while checking the time on your iPad every few minutes. While others around the table continue to talk, you stifle a yawn as you close your eyes, imagining what you will accomplish this weekend. You envision yourself having fun on Friday night, staying up and chatting with your friends in the common room after a trip to Otto’s. On Saturday, you’ll wake up at 8 a.m. and spend the morning at Inkwells, aesthetically doing your math homework while sipping on a matcha latte; for lunch, you’ll drop by Me and Ollie’s and order a toasted sandwich, finishing your paper while you wait; for dinner, you’ll DoorDash with your friends and watch your favorite show as you eat. On Sunday, you’ll just laze around and sleep as much as you want (What homework? I finished it all!), and maybe walk to OBA if you feel up to it.
However, is that really what the typical Exonian’s weekend looks like? Let’s take a look at what truly embodies the spirit at Exeter: work smart, not hard.
Friday Evening: You have that one club that you’ve been skipping all the meetings for because you just never felt up to it, but you’ll definitely make it this week. You swing by Weth (is anyone calling it the new dining hall?) and look for a clump of people you know. There they are, all crammed into one of the tiny circular tables. You take one look at the line and grab pasta instead. You think about getting a headstart on your work, but then one of your friends drags you into a debate. The clock ticks further to 7 p.m., and you’re about to get up and head to your meeting, but a friend mentions that they’re going to hang out in the common room of their dorm, and - oh, would you like to come too? Suddenly, all thoughts of homework and clubs fly out of your head and you’re following them all the way to the other side of campus to have another very “productive” discussion.
Saturday: Is that your alarm? You startle awake and then realize it’s a Saturday. It’s only 7, and you have no plans until 10. It’s fine if you sleep just a little longer… WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S 11:00??? You scramble awake and run out of your room before you realize that Elm’s already closed. Oh well, you can just go to Grill. Then you remember that it doesn’t open till 3. You walk back to your dorm silently and sit down, hoping you can get some work done. Then you get a text from one of your friends, and as you wait for their response, you open TikTok, assuring yourself that you’ll only watch a few videos… Your eyes start to hurt a little, and you check the time. 12:00 p.m.? Where did the time go? It’s too late to be productive now; the day’s already been wasted.
Sunday: You wake up at 1 p.m., having binged all 10 episodes of the fifth season of Outer Banks. Your roommate is somewhere (probably the library, the indoor tennis courts, or some other productive place) while you lay in bed, staring at your sloped ceiling and thinking about what you have done so far in life. You can’t think of anything, so you force yourself to get up and sit at your desk. You open your computer, but it already ran out of battery. You decide to check your homework list on Canvas, but your finger takes a detour and instead accidentally slips (oops!) and opens the Instagram app. (To be fair, who designed the Canvas logo? Why couldn’t they have made something prettier? like a sunset ombre instead of an endless, doom-filled tunnel of red polka-dots?) Before you know it, it’s 3 p.m. You haven’t eaten, drunk, or even remotely looked at your schedule. You decide to look at your Outlook, thinking that it would be a good starting point for some productivity. Instead, you get hit by a barrage of due dates. What do you mean by Final Math Project? What do you mean read till page 285 by Tuesday? Before you can decide which assignment to tackle first, you are hit with another wave of club emails. Sighing, you pack your bag and head off to another club meeting. You can always tackle that reading tomorrow.
Monday night (1 a.m.): Oh no! You just realized you haven’t done ANY of your homework. (how did 12 hours pass by so quickly??) You decide to click on the Calendar button on Canvas and brace yourself for impact (there can’t be that many assignments, right?) As your mouse hovers over the Monday section, you choke on your coke. One history paper, one English poetry analysis paragraph, one lab report, and nine math problems. The multi-colored boxes seem to swallow you up, and you stifle a scream, your throat clenching till you can’t breathe. You sit in silence, then suddenly move into a frenzy of action. Math and the report will have to wait - the paper is the biggest hurdle to tackle. Hurriedly, you type an email to your teacher, asking for an extension (1 hour past the due date isn’t that bad, right?). You open a brand new Google doc and begin writing in a frenzy. You don’t realize until mid-paragraph that you’re writing about Caesar while your class is on Socrates. By 4 a.m., you have written a rough draft of 700 words. Relieved, you submit it on Canvas, then rush to the English analysis. You go on a tangent about how the emotions and life experience of the poet influenced their choice of onomatopoeia, figurative language, rhyme, sibilance, assonance, enjambment, and practically every single literary device you can think of. You glance longingly at your bed but continue writing. Simultaneously, you scrawl a few numbers on your math homework, praying that your teacher won’t do notebook checks the next day. At 5 a.m., you finally finish your English and math homework. Drained, remorseful, and absolutely dead-tried, you fall onto your bed, falling asleep despite the morning light creeping through your window. You wonder why you haven’t studied like you promised yourself and strike an oath that you will DEFINITELY study early next weekend — sometime.