By: Carter Hemion, Humour Editor

This November, finals season looms with major assignments piling up like the laundry I’ve been meaning to do for three weeks. To lighten the task of studying, create a game of it! Nothing motivates me better than pretending my homework wasn’t actually assigned to me by an institution I keep paying to label me with a student number and then forget about me.

Personally, I prefer water over shots of something labeled “vodka” but tastes like gremlin piss. However, I assume anyone still reading at this point wants to get wasted instead of hearing one more word about people like Shakespeare or Freud, so if you’re like me, just replace “shot” with drinking an entire bottle of water. (Hydrate before you die-drate, am I right?) You may not get drunk, but you’ll be peeing every ten minutes, and isn’t that the same end result?

Virtual study group

• Take three sips for every time you check your email in hopes of your 8:20 a.m. class being cancelled.
• Take a shot every time somebody asks a clarifying question about a criminology class with words that sound made-up. 
• Take another shot when you answer a question completely wrong, but somehow relate it to the TV show you’ve been watching every night instead of studying.
• Start to chug when someone’s screen freezes with their face distorted and looking vaguely like the woman-yelling-at-a-cat meme.
• Finish your drink when someone privately messages you about their essay (with only 12 words written in the last hour) instead of just talking to the virtual group about it. Add a shot after if it was your essay.

Residence study group

• Take a shot every time a raccoon looks at you through the window, begging for your snacks.
• Take five sips every time you overhear your neighbour’s . . . private activities.
• Take a shot when you realize a friend isn’t actually studying, but watching anime on their laptop.
• Shotgun a drink when someone decides to take over the music and just plays one artist’s obscure tracks.
• Chug the entire time your community advisor is in view. Bonus points if you make sustained eye contact to assert dominance. (Yes, this includes when a CA is part of the study group). 

Private study session

• Take a sip every time you finish a page of readings without knowing what you just read.
• Shotgun a drink when your class group chat gets spammed with memes about your professor (again).
• Take three sips when you get up just to stare blankly into your refrigerator to feel something other than disappointment in yourself for waiting so long to start working. 
• Take a shot when your professor’s recorded lecture reminds you of something you have no intentions of studying.
• Chug from the nearest bottle of hard liquor for the entire time you read part of a syllabus like it’s going to spontaneously change in November.