Ah, finals week. The week when the cold settles into your bones as the coffee you’ve had on a virtual IV drip settles into your blood. (“There’s no serious consequences to consuming too much caffeine, right?” you think to yourself, but some questions are better left un-Googled.)

Your stress levels are rising, and your sleep schedule is becoming more and more sporadic. So how do you stay sane? Well, lucky for you, I’m offering some handy tips and tricks for surviving finals week.

First, petting animals has been scientifically proven to decrease stress. But when you’re living in the city, especially on a college campus, it can be tough to find dogs and cats to pet. Much easier to find: rats and pigeons (the rats of the sky). Obviously, rats are furrier and therefore more effective at relieving stress.

Set up some traps by sewer grates, and by traps, I mean shoeboxes filled with trash. But not just any trash. Save your finest, most appealing detritus over the course of approximately two months. Once you’ve gathered enough, place the shoebox by the mouth of the sewer grate.

Soon enough, a rat will mosey along and find that it’s his lucky day. He will climb in the box, and at that point, you start to pet him. Be gentle and kind, but firm enough that he knows whose shoebox he’s climbed into. After maybe fifteen minutes of this, let him go back into the sewer.

Repeat this process until you’ve befriended nearly all the local rats. Ideally, while you pet them, you should be making eye contact. With your eyes, communicate your desire to be friends with both with this rat in particular as well as the rat community as a whole.

After a few days of this, six rats will be waiting for you where you usually place the shoebox. They will begin to depart as soon as they see you. Follow them. Don’t stop until they stop, even as they take you places you never even knew existed. Don’t stop to smell the roses. They’re probably not really roses at all.

When the rats have all stopped, you should notice that they all seem to be bowing. Follow their lead. Look up through the lines of your eyelashes and you should make out a golden crown. The crown sits on the head of the largest rat you’ve ever seen. You’d be horrified if he didn’t have such kind eyes.

Approach the Rat King carefully, still bowing. He will extend a paw. You will shake it using only your thumb and index finger. You will exchange a meaningful look with the Rat King, and then you will start to pet him. As you do so, you feel fragments of his ancient rat wisdom prickle at your consciousness. 

They will not come up on any of your final exams, but you’d do well to remember them anyway.

After this first time, any time you’re feeling overwhelmed you can come down and pet the Rat King. Your stress will melt away.

If that strategy isn’t for you, I recommend listening to “This Year” by the Mountain Goats for two weeks straight and just trying your absolute hardest, because what else can you do?