Juana Garcia/The Cougar
In The Cougar’s weekly anonymous advice column, I talk about preparing for finals, shady roommates and movies to watch. To submit your questions for future issues, click the “Ask Ashley” button on our home page.
Ashley, what are some things I can do to get ready for finals season?! AHHHHHH!
Oop. Thanks for reminding me to study anon, I totally forgot about finals coming up. But don’t worry, there are many ways to prepare for it.
To prepare for finals, or any test really, the key is to start early. I’d recommend listing topics that would be on the test and finding time in your schedule to study them before doomsday.
I’d recommend focusing on topics you don’t understand well and lightly brushing on topics you already know. This would make study sessions a bit easier. It’s also important to give yourself a lot of time for your brain to remember things. So if you have been finessing your classes at this point, I think now is the time to crack open that book, bestie. Make sure you wipe the dust off of it too.
Definitely use study methods that work for you, and try studying with people from your classes. I find studying with others helpful since it provides a space for a lot of teaching and learning. Remember to take time for breathers, sleeping and eating. You are human after all. I’m sure you’re going to do great on your finals. I wish you the best of luck!
Ashley, what do I do about a passive-aggressive roommate? We don’t interact that often (schedules), but they keep mentioning stuff about revenge and I can’t tell if they’re just joshing.
Um, revenge? I’m not going to lie anon, but this sounds like potential criminal activity. It’s giving “Dateline NBC” vibes. In other words, I’m lowkey concerned that your roommate is using passive-aggressive communication at their big age.
Despite the mix-matched schedules, have you considered talking with them? I know it’s hard to communicate with someone passive-aggressive, but talking it out can help in opening channels of communication. Maybe the vibes are off and your roommate doesn’t feel comfortable voicing out their concerns? That could be the reason why they are whispering shady (and alarming) ish under their breath.
Additionally, talking it out can give you the opportunity of listing out your boundaries and make clear how communication should be going forward. I would also say remove yourself from the situation, if possible. But if you can’t, I guess that’s your roommate, and you gotta stick beside them, unfortunately.
Hopefully, your roommate is only grumbling about mundane stuff like you not taking out the trash. But until then, sleep with one eye open, shawty. Your roommate sounds a bit devious to me.
Ashley, what are some movies you’d recommend? Any genre, any length!
Ooo, I’m not a huge movie buff, but I’ll try to answer your question, anon. I do prefer television over movies, so if you asked me about television shows, I could talk about that for hours. I just think of TV shows as chopped-up movies with many sequels.
While I have limited knowledge of movies, I do appreciate ones that fall under the action, drama and comedy genres. “Romeo + Juliet,” “The Accountant,” “Now You See Me” and “Logan Lucky” are a couple of examples.
I also love superhero movies because it allows me to dissociate from reality for a hot minute. Some of my favorite ones come from Marvel, such as “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Doctor Strange” and all of the “X-Men” movies.
As for D.C., “Watchmen” and all of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are my favorite, with a heavy emphasis on “Batman: The Dark Knight.”
And finally, it’s not necessarily a genre, but my all-time favorite movies are based on real-life stories. Some examples are “I, Tonya,” “Vice” and Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” as well as “Goodfellas.”
It was really hard to pick which movies I wanted to showcase here, but I hope you like my recommendations. It’s also okay if you hate them all.
