The evil sickness that engulfs the school in a myriad of stressed coughing kids. The important thing is why we get sick during finals. The answer is more complicated than expected.

Now we get sick due to an auto-immune response from a foreign object entering your body. The amount and severity of symptoms depend on how strong your immune system is and what type of foreign object is in your body. The finals flu is just the common cold. This particular strain of the cold is so nasty because it affects when our immune system is weakened by the stress of finals.

The human immune system can be weakened by many factors including stress, genetics, and previous illnesses. In this particular case, the cold affects us so hard due to the stress that we are incurring during finals week. This is not helped by some peoples already weakened immune systems compounding the effects of the cold.

The only real way to beat the finals flu is to wait it out and keep taking regular precautions regarding cold prevention. So keep your head down, cough, and stumble your way through finals week.