one way to ruin yourself is to find out that there is a take-home portion of your final, worth 20%, that the class got notice of 2 weeks ago, but you didn't know about because you hadn't gone for two weeks, first writing your thesis, then writing your thesis on extension some more, and then concussing for a week. it was to have been a commentary on 15 lines of aeneid 12. this is disastrous. commentaries take forever to write. and my latin is non-existent. did i hear a deathy sound then?