Study Group

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a library door, a backpack unzipping, someone whispering "we're not studying")
It's a study group. It says so on the invite.

[Verse 1]
Somebody organized a study group for eight o'clock,
and by nine o'clock the studying had comprehensively stopped,
and by ten the whole apartment was a costume and a cup
and a whiteboard that says STUDY GROUP that no one's looking up
from their phone or their drink or their extremely urgent chat —
it's a study group in name and honey, that is very much that.

[Chorus]
Study group! Study group!
Nobody's studying and everybody knew!
Cram all night, cram all night —
you're gonna fail the morning but the evening's going right!
Study group. Study group.
It was never about the studying. It never was.

[Verse 2]
Now cramming is a word that's doing more than one thing here:
it's the panic before the midterm with a highlighter and fear,
and it's the way you fit eleven people in a one-bed flat,
and it's a third thing, obviously, and we'll leave it right at that.
Three meanings and a deadline and a room that's way too small —
that's the whole entire college experience, that's all.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Tomorrow there's a midterm and it's going to go badly,
and everybody knows it and they're doing this gladly,
because the thing you actually learn in a room like this at night
is not on the exam and won't be graded and it's right:
that the people are the point. The material's the excuse.
Nobody remembers the exam. Everybody remembers the room.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(a chair scrapes, birds outside, someone groans)
It's light out.
It's LIGHT out.
The exam's at nine.