The Pre-Med
You live in perpetual fear. As far as you are concerned, the noble pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, as something enjoyable, ended thousands of years ago when Hippocrates invented the medical profession. You’re really stressed out. In fact, nobody is more stressed out than you, not even other pre-meds. Or meds. But you like the feeling, and that’s why you talk about it non-stop. You can be found at 4am several days before any exam, procrastinating by calculating your GPA, then trying to memorize obscure concepts that your TFs told you would be on the final. They were only kidding. They are out to get you. The only joy you will know this semester will be the 5 minutes after you finish your last final and before you realize that you’re taking the MCAT next month. That, and the conjugal bliss you will enjoy in 10-15 years with your wife and family, in between malpractice suits.

The Idealist
You love learning. Or rather, you love telling yourself that you’re learning. You think that just because you’ve done all the readings and transcribed and color-coded every single word of lecture, the teaching fellows won’t fuck you over on the final. You will spend the evenings of finals week reading through your notes with a satisfied smile on your face, wondering why the guy sitting at the other table (see above) keeps cursing and pounding his head with his fists. You’ll go into the exam room with the gentle flutter of butterflies in your stomach, and exit with the serene joy that only knowledge can bring. One day you’ll make a wonderful professor in cultural studies or Irish mythology. Until the government revokes your funding and spends it on real academic pursuits like weapons research or burning oatmeal to power SUVs. Then you will become a high school teacher. And die a spinster.

The Cool Kid
You are among the few people at your current Ivy League institution who was not made fun of in high school. This is because you did all your studying in secret, and because there was a rumor (started by you) that you smoked a joint at the end of senior year. Nothing makes you more insecure than to be mistaken for a pre-med. Because of this deep-rooted fear, you will strategically drop comments like “What, me, study? Not me, I’m not a pre-med!” or “I’m going into finance.” You will successfully continue your reputation as the cool kid, mostly because you’re taking easy classes like economics and introductory calculus, even though you already took the AP exam.

The Genius
You only went to lecture once this semester, to take the midterm. This is because you stay up until 5:30 playing online poker (and making a killing). On exam day you will roll out of bed at 1:30, go to your 2:15 final, and get the highest grade in the class. Almost as glorious as the time in high school when you won the world Math Olympiad and came back to a parade in your Eastern European hometown.

The Adrenaline Junkie
You pretend that you don’t have to study, but unlike the Cool Kid, you don’t do it for the social cachet. You do it for the same reason you play Starcraft even though nobody outside South Korea thinks it’s cool: testosterone. That, and adrenaline. Sometimes cocaine. Because the truth is, nothing makes you feel more alive than answering a question on the final knowing that you just read the answer on Sparknotes this morning. Or that you have just proved Conservation of Energy with 3 minutes left, even though you could’ve done the problem 10 times faster if you had gone to any lecture after the 2nd week of class. When your exam ends, you punch the air and feel the rush of accomplishment coursing through your veins. Your mind races with career possibilities. The world would be a better place if everyone was as good as you at not doing any work.

The Dropout
Like the Adrenaline Junkie and the Cool Kid, you seem like you don’t study. Unlike them, this is actually because you don’t study. You also don’t go to class. Or exams. There are 3 possible explanations for this. 1) You are a VES concentrator, and will drop out in order to do “real art.” 2) You are lazy and/or have a drug problem, and will drop out to do “real” (i.e. “more”) drugs. 3) You are the founder of a revolutionary NGO, internet startup, or alternative energy startup and you can’t spare any time for petty things like “school” or “friends.” And you will drop out. Only afterward will you realize that Africa does not welcome you, the internet doesn’t need more social networking sites, and that ocean waves are really hard to catch with large metal plates. But no worries, by the time your organization goes bankrupt you will be able to survive on your new skills, such as taking out loans, tax fraud, and mercenary warfare.