Lauren Daviheiser

The middle of October is both an exciting and dreaded time for me. Halloween is quickly approaching, fall weather arrives, and I celebrate my birthday. At the same time, I begin to feel the crunch coming up in the form of midterms, the worst part of the entire month. While I normally don’t enjoy midterms, I was less than thrilled to study for them while I’m here in Rome. As a friend’s Facebook status update put it so perfectly: “Midterms while studying abroad-cruel and unusual punishment”. I did survive midterm week like all students inevitably do, praying they made it through the barrage of tests relatively unscathed. For my roommates and myself, we spent a weekend cooped up in our apartment with our books and computers and felt it rather unfair we were studying on such a beautiful Roman weekend. Midterms ultimately led us in search of typical college student “brain food”, including loads of coffee. It was a hard week of staying up late, hanging out in the library, and it culminated in a huge birthday bash to celebrate three birthdays and our relief that the week was over. A much deserved break for students who have forgotten that they still have schoolwork to do while spending our weekends running around Europe. Only eight weeks until finals!