There’s more Red Bull in your blood stream than haemoglobin. You don’t want to leave your perfect study spot for fear that some scheming pre-med has been watching, waiting for you to abandon your roost so they can rip it from your claws. You stare at your laptop and wonder how it is so good at pulling, chewing up and spitting our soul through just a keyboard. Those are some pretty great skillz, you muse, as you slip into a daydream about what would happen if Yale did away with exams along with Sex Week and gave us an Abstinence Week in which we could play with the flowers and strum Bob Dylan on the gee-tar.

Time to wake up and smell the anxiety.

Welcome to the second circle of Yale Hell, the one directly after the nothing’s-real-but-the-laziness limbo of reading week: actual exam period. There’s no Virgil here to guide you, but you can prob find your way by following the white charger extension cords stretching from wall outlets to the inferno within us all.

No one looks quite right. Paranoid, slightly (OK who are we kidding seriously) manic eyes follow your progress. The once-chill bro from section looks like he’s been electrocuted. That one girl with the amazing boots is now in flipflops and sweats that are just painfully too short, and her eyes are red.

They’re missing something, reader. It’s a critical part of their lives but one they often choose to turn off. Some Elizabethan chiller called Will Shakespeare used to write about it a ton in ways that make a Dubra high seem lacking. It’s called self-knowledge. It’s the tiny voice in all our heads that we need to stop killing ourselves and maybekindasorta have real-person fun for even ten minutes. Today, Cross Campus is giving it a loud-speaker and telling you to listen up or we’ll have Mary Miller expel you/do something you really fear. Here are the top 10 signs that you need to listen to your life coach side and give the books/laptops/tablets (double meaning!!!) a rest.

1) People are telling you they’ve never seen you look this tired. No, but actually. That happened to this reporter. And while it does reveal some rather touching sympathy on the asker’s part, it’s also a bit of a slap in the face. Go to bed. Make an appointment somewhere nice and come back looking real. Remember: you can never be attractive and college-age again. You could still be attractive. Your nerdy side may still hold sway. But the moment where everything coincides will pass. WHOA deep Plato burst.

2) You’re becoming way too familiar with the intimate habits of the randos who study around you. So, yes, we are all supposed to gaze into each others’ eyes and form beautiful, everlasting human connections and such just about now. But the fact that you now know just how many plaid shirts the a capella boy to your left owns isn’t really an accomplishment. Neither is your awareness that the female athlete two tables down fills her water bottle every 43.2 minutes on average. There are some things you just don’t want or need to know; some lines do not need to be crossed. Time for a new activity.

3) When you “put your head down for 2 minutes,” you start snoring and sleep-talking about colorful ladders in play-school. This does happen. And it’s never pretty. You get the saliva-flood variety or the high-pitched snorers; on occasion, you even have the type that makes feeble efforts to surface every 3 minutes, gazes at their phone mournfully and sinks back down. There’s got to be a better place for you, beautiful dreamer. Go find it.

4) You regretfully look at texts from the person you’ve had your eye on for weeks and think ‘maybe next semester.’ That never, ever happens. Sorry. There are thousands of people at this school. You need to take your future into your own hands — hang out and see what happens! You’ll derive more marginal utility from that than from your econ slides, we promise.

5) You’re now besties with the people working the early morning shifts around town. And they’re delightful. But they know your secret shame as they hand you your orange juice/junk food/Caramel Mocha Frap — this isn’t the beginning of your day; it’s part of a continuous nightmare.

6) You’re behind on every show, and die a little every time you hear people discussing them. There is nothing more pressing than your weekly South Park needs. That is an objective truth (or, if it you don’t think it is, pull this article it into a philosophy paper for a bonus three paragraphs of BS). Hulu awaits, and it will always love you more than Bass.

7) You’re behind on pop culture. What, huh, Kanye’s singing about Paris or something? We’d cry for you, but we’re too busy being aware of our surroundings. Go read the news! What are people saying on your fave radical feminist blog? Has a new Rick Perry campaign video surfaced, and has someone stuck an image of gay men in it yet? If you don’t know, how will you tell your eager kids when they want to know what life was like during our exciting times? No, really. What? Think about the children!

8) All your conversations are now conducted in or around libraries. Let’s not pretend anyone loves the ‘I need to whisper cause I’m in the libz LOL’ game. It had its novelty, it was kinda cute, but it’s done. Mom wants to hear your news, but how will you whine about your horrid double-crossing friend when she’s two feet away? Will your long-distance partner think your love for them is tied to the excitement in your voice and panic? There are many problems caused by this and few advantages. Take a breather and chat in peace away from the mass freakouts.

9) Maybe 0.1 percent of your conversations in the last 4 days have been about things other than studying, how excited you are for break and what exactly your finals schedule looks like. We’re here to talk, and think, and learn by challenging each other. There are so many fascinating connections we could be making, so many pressing issues that merit a real discussion. We don’t even know how we as a campus feel about Kate Middleton’s baby yet!!! Go gossip over coffee and remember that human interaction trumps cramming any time of the week.

10) You’re reading this as a four minute study break in a library. Cos you’re just that desperate and, yes, we are following you at all times. GO DO SOMETHING.