Life

Over 8 Million People Have Watched This Poor College Student Recount The Nightmare Of Her First Final

by Megan Grant

It's the stuff nightmares are made of: it's the morning of your final exam, you don't have the materials you need, and you end up going to the wrong room entirely. Oh, and you forgot to put pants on. If you're Ann Mark, though, this is reality (minus the pantslessness part). This student's video of her final exam horror story is the ultimate shout-out to school-induced panic attacks; and while the experience was undoubtedly nerve-wracking for her, the internet is loving it. Mark shared her experience via a video on Twitter.

Allow me to set the scene. Mark attends the University of Texas at Austin. It was the day of her exam — her first final exam ever — for World Cinema History. In case you've forgotten, final exams are stressful. Studying is a pain, you don't always know what to expect, and weeks (if not months) of preparation can go down the drain as soon as you run into a test question that completely stumps you.

Ann Mark took a different approach. In a more "fly by the seat of your pants" type of thing, she said, "Nah, I'm good," to class, and stopped going about a month ago. "Since I stopped going to class, the whole week before the exam I had been cramming and taking notes on my textbook," she tells Bustle in an email.

It wasn't just the last-minute studying that threw her for a loop, though. After a series of seriously unfortunate events, she recounted the whole traumatizing day on Twitter, in a hilarious video that's gone viral. I'd love to say I'm not laughing at her, but she's not laughing, so... um...

Here's the video as posted on YouTube. Check out the tweet here.

To review:

  1. No blue book.
  2. Went to the wrong building.
  3. Runs into window.
  4. Went to the wrong building for the second time.
  5. At least remembered pants. (Win!)

If nothing else, Mark's awful experience was highly entertaining for the rest of us. At the time of writing, the tweet has gathered over 131,000 retweets and 368,000 likes. It was a rough day — a rough day, indeed; but she managed to keep a positive attitude. In fact, she wasted no time in trying to track down all the people who helped her along the way.

She wasn't alone in her situation, either. Actually, that's a lie. Nobody else was running into a window that day. What I mean is upon Mark sharing her story with the Twitterverse, people found it totally relatable and joined in with their own stories and words of encouragement. We all have rough days in college. Some of us might even do an entire film project that accounts for a decent portion of our class grade on the wrong film entirely. Not saying I did that.*

Mark's story really resonated with people, and she got special shout-outs from the Dean of Students, the university co-op, and even Google Maps. Guys! Google Maps!

As word spread of dear Ann Mark's struggles, all the right people heard about it; and she started getting some real answers to her questions — like, who was the Google Maps girl?

Mark was most appreciative of Google Maps Girl.

As was Google Maps.

And what about this problem with the blue books? What are we going to do about the blue books situation?

That's the president of the university, FYI. NBD.

Not everyone found her story as funny as the rest of us, though. Mark shared screenshots of what look to be Facebook comments, and they get pretty brutal.

And these folks had opinions about this "snowflake" — because apparently no one cares that she still made it to the right building and probably aced her exam. Haters!

Thankfully, Mark has thick skin: "Honestly... I can totally respect the haters!" she tells Bustle. "I hadn't been to class! I was asking for it! I know it's hard for some people to laugh along, so I totally get it. That being said, I think the mean comments are the funniest thing on Earth. My friends came over last night and we sat in a circle and read the meanest comments we could. We were literally rolling on the floor laughing. The comments usually have terrible grammar. One lady called me a 'looser.'"

Oh my.

She may forget blue books and go to the wrong buildings and walk into windows, but Ann Mark is no dummy; and true to her word, she didn't let the Debbie Downers rain on her parade. She turned her viral tweets and instant internet fame into a great thing: this.

Way to turn a negative into a positive, Ann Mark.

Mark doesn't yet know how she did on this test but tells Bustle, "My other exams were a lot better, and I'm sure next semester I'll be more prepared!" Here's hoping her report card is full of As.

*I did that.