Hey Siri, play my panic mode midterm playlist

Allison Wissink (left) and Isabella Urgel (right) deal with midterm stress by making it a duet. (Bailey Young/AQ)

Last night, my roommate played the same song three times before I realized it was on repeat.  

The song was “Pushing It Down and Praying,” Lizzy McAlpine’s third most popular song on Spotify. I asked her why.

She shrugged. “It’s good.”

Okay, perfect.

But it got me thinking about the strange things we do when we’re stressed. We repeat songs. We walk around with headphones on for hours. We skip a class because going to class would mean admitting how far behind we are, while somehow getting more behind.

Midterms have a way of making everything slightly strange.

So I asked three of my roommates what they’ve been listening to lately. Not their favourite songs, necessarily, but the songs they keep coming back to. The ones that follow them through walks to class, library sessions and those late nights when studying has become more like staring.

Here’s what those divas had to say.

First is Isabella Urgel, who graduated last year but apparently did not graduate from the stress of student life. Her choice is Taylor Swift’s “This Is Me Trying.”

“Lowkey, my song is the ultimate doom and despair,” she said.

Naturally. Isabella’s music taste is less “study playlist” and more “staring dramatically out a rainy window while questioning every life decision.”

Then there’s our newest roommate, Rachel McNeil, whose midterm coping strategy is apparently just hating everything.

Lost Kings’ second song on their Paper Crowns album, “Anti Everything,” is McNeil's go-to song when the due dates start approaching. 

Which checks out. McNeil is sassy, she knows what she wants and it keeps the rest of us in line.

Finally, there’s Allison Wissink and her wonderfully chaotic choice, “She Changes the Weather.”

A Swim Deep song that has “hope core” in every verse. It’s fitting for someone who seems to change the atmosphere wherever she goes. One minute she’s in the kitchen, the next she’s vanished and somehow she’s already been spotted across campus.

Between Isabella’s doom and despair, Rachel’s sass and Allison’s atmospheric existence, our apartment has less of a study playlist and more of a psychological profile.

But maybe that’s the point.

We all have something we reach for when the pressure starts building: a song to drown out the panic, make the walk to class bearable or simply fill the silence.

Because if you’re going to panic, you might as well have a soundtrack.