Long range sniper rifles, infrared night vision scopes, unmanned aerial drones, extra ammunition, elven light armor, glass bows, dragons, cat-people and a case of Red Bull. This may sound like the makings for a story of someone about to go on patrol with someone loaded on LSD with a case of Red Bull for some reason, but this is just my nightly escape from the impending madness that is finals week.

These past months have seen the release of major title video game releases for the Xbox, PS3 and PC such as the military simulator Battlefield 3, the fantasy role playing adventure game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and the fast-paced action game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 to name a few. Now you may be wondering why the hell I’m spending some of my time chasing dragons or taking out a dude at 500 meters with a bolt action rifle when I should be reading up on rocks and English knights. The answer is simple: temporary distraction.

Playing games during finals week doesn’t mean that it’s the only thing I will be doing. On the contrary, in addition to preparing for a study abroad trip, most of my time will be allotted doing what everyone else is doing: shoving their head into a book for countless hours for a 45 minute test. The act of playing games intermittently allows me to take a breather for an hour or two and come back to my studying, stress and anger free (at least if I’m playing Skyrim. If I am playing Battlefield 3 on a laggy server, I’m more than likely to set my book on fire after a few server disconnects).

I found this technique highly effective whenever I wrote essays or was working on something I really didn’t care for too much. For the former, whenever I would get to a point where I asked myself, “What do I write now?” I would take a quick break and think about what I was going to write next and finish the essay while playing a game in sort of an autopilot mode. This allowed for me to brainstorm while getting some decent gamerscore points while either flying an attack helicopter for no good reason and doing tricks or going around and setting people on fire while throwing cows. For working on an assignment I cared less for, it is a tad hard to do without the scolding and authoritative nature of a parental figure in my household. To make up for this lack of parental supervision, I would get in the mind set that if I finished it within a set amount of time and with a certain quality, I would subconsciously let myself play for a bit before going to bed. Of course this has led to a couple of, “Oh who cares, I’m going to kill a couple dozen dragons. This assignment can go die in a fire.” This semester, I have had a 3:1 assignment-completed-before-due-date to cram-night ratio.

In the past, I’ve always had quite a bit of a problem post finals week where I always feel drained and unmotivated. However, with this new process I’m using, I find that I’m slightly more energetic whenever I’m studying and less stressed/worn out when I’m done. This may be due to the fact that I’m unleashing my rage and frustration out on a poor random game character by pushing him off a cliff while frozen instead of the other option of me typing/scribbling notes angrily while thinking, “Oh this test is so dead when I go to class tomorrow. Yeah, I’ll stab it with a pen.”

Now this process may not be right for everyone. If you are a hardcore gamer, you might find yourself stuck in Skyrim for 14 hours trying to find that last damn piece of the Merhunes Dagon dagger while Elder Dragons keep spawning and wanting to pick a fight. I can understand that. Elder Dragons do have some high health points and can get really tedious after the 15th one, but you have to remember that playing the game for a small amount of time is supposed to relieve anger, not cause it.

If video gaming is your passion, and you see yourself just wasting the hours away flying a jet around Caspian Border taking out T-90 tanks, just do what I do for essays and what one of my friends is doing for this semester (I’m looking at you A&E Editor Tara Bennett). Reward yourself with some kickass sessions of delicious video gaming when you are done with finals. Not only will you be able to stay up past midnight spawn camping some dude from Norway, but you will get a serious sense of achievement out of it after spawn camping your finals.

For those who are still taking finals this week, good luck and for those lucky few who already finished yesterday for some odd reason, FUS RO DAH!