By Daniel Coffey

I try to convince my friends of this every year with little success, but hopefully you’ll hear me out: the zombie apocalypse is going to occur during finals — no doubt about it. Before you dismiss the idea, take a second to think about it with me.

A simple Google search reveals that brain parasites are one of the most probable causes of a zombie apocalypse. Of all the places that parasites might thrive in the world, I would imagine that a fraternity house might work best — they’re dirty, smelly and full of people who are blatantly unaware of their surroundings.

After all, it would be a brain-eating parasite’s dream to find a nice, Sperry-wearing, snapback-rocking frat guy to infest. Considering all the hours he’s probably spent in the gym up to this point, the parasite would have a heyday with a body so strong — it just might take some time for the parasite to eat through his ego.

From there, it would be easy to start infecting the campus. During finals, most people are already walking around with that blank, dead look behind their eyes. Most people wouldn’t even notice passing zombie-frat boy on the way to their Core Humanities final, mostly because they’re probably running full speed to the Joe to buy the blue book their professors reminded them to buy approximately 14 times.

The most obvious location to get the zombie party started would be in the Knowledge Center, so consider yourself lucky if you study in the DeLaMare. As “Asleep at Nevada” has proven time and time again, people enjoy sleeping in the Knowledge Center, and it is proven (because I assert that it’s proven) that the number of sleeping students increases tenfold during finals.

Zombie-frat boy would have no problem wandering up to the first person he saw sleeping in a chair to spread his disease. Unless you’re one of the few people who has yet to add snapsnevada on Snapchat, then you already know that people do freaky things in the Knowledge Center. Chances are, most students could pass the zombie-frat guy eating the brains of a sleeping victim and not even bat an eyelash.

Now that sleepy-zombie has been infected, he’s ready to become the face of sleepwalking — eternal sleepwalking (zing!). Sleepy-zombie would creep his way up to the silent floor to find the next victim. Thanks to finals, the fifth floor will be packed, which is ideal for sleepy-zombie. The victim will transform into their zombie form in complete silence knowing that if they were to scream about the zombie attacker, they would only be met with dirty looks and pointed shushing.

From there, only your imagination could picture the horror that will unfold. The epidemic will spread to the student union affecting all the hapless Joe workers and ASUN kids, effectively ruining any hope for more Thursday night movies or welcome back concerts. It will creep down to Hilliard Plaza, rendering the journalism students hopeless in reporting the facts and business students ineffective in profiting from selling weapons.

Finally, the disease will reach the south side of campus and pick off the science majors one by one, trapping them in the labs they have not left for several weeks. Sadly, the engineers’ hovercrafts just won’t be enough to carry them away from the onslaught of zombies.

The apocalypse will have overtaken the Wolf Pack and there will be nothing we can do to stop it … unless, of course, we look up from our books every once in awhile.

You see, finals are a time when we are least aware of our surroundings and, instead, caught up in the minutia of concepts we’ve ignored learning all semester. We become so stressed and overwhelmed that we forget to take a break every once in a while — look up, sit back and just breathe. Finals are not the end-all-be-all of your college career, despite seeming that way at times.

You are not defined by tests or grade point averages; you are defined by your skills, qualities and abilities to contribute to this world. Stop letting the stress of finals destroy your mental health.

Drinking six gallons of coffee and pulling three all-nighters will not help you as much as you think it will. The undue stress you’re placing on yourself may actually detract from your testing performance.

During finals, it is important to relax every once in a while and give yourself some time to process the information you may be cramming into your head. The university offers a number of stress-relieving activities from therapy dogs to free BBQs.

Lift your head up from your textbook at least a few times this finals season and take a quick breather. After all, you never know when it might save you from a zombie apocalypse.

Daniel Coffey studies journalism. He can be reached at dcoffey@unr.edu and on Twitter @TheSagebrush.