end of the semester stress

If you'll recall, I posted about stressed out students at the beginning of the fall term. Tomorrow is the last day of classes and students are definitely freaking out:

We have centralized printing at my library. The printers are right near the reference desk. A big portion of my time on the reference desk is spent helping students print. Yesterday at about 8:45am a student approached the printers as though he were going to print. I've helped this student with research before - very nice, very polite, slightly geeky and very appreciative of any help I could provide. Nothing in my previous interaction with this student prepared me for what was about to happen. In order to print you need your student ID, which in the interest of privacy (my school gives it a cute-sy name), I'll call the "X Card". So the student lumbers over to the printers and whips out his wallet. He immediately notices that X Card is missing and starts a freak out fit: "My X Card! My X Card! Where is my X Card?!?!!? OH NOOOOOOO I'VE LOST MY X CARD!!!!!!!!!!!" He starts hyperventilating and you can see from the expression on his face that he's already though 12 steps ahead and has realized that without his X Card he can't print, can't get into his dorm, can't get into his dorm room, can't eat at the dining hall, etc etc. He can get a replacement card for $25 but he hadn't thought beyond the immediacy of needing the card *now*. So he's fiendishly flipping through his wallet in a total panic - fighting tears (for real), hyperventilating, and muttering "My X Card . . . where is it? . . . it's always in my wallet . . . I lost my X Card . . . " I was a little taken aback by this, as was everyone else in the library. My boss looked both horrified and embarrassed and the student worked at the circ desk looked shocked. I approached the student as though speaking to a scared kitten and talked him off the ledge, telling him he could borrow our generic X Card to print and that if he lost his card on campus where he could go to find it. Smooth, calming tones, no sudden movements. He grabbed my offered guest card, stopped crying and zipped out of the library and I spent the rest of the morning trying to get my eyebrows retreat from their shock.

Last day of classes stress. Oi.