Sixth finals week ever. Worst lineup so far—five exams in five days. I’ve handled busier weeks, but never five upper-division exams lined up to hit this hard. These notes are a breadcrumb trail for future-me, proof that the week happened the way memory will try to soften later.
Saturday
Operating Systems is in 48 hours, and Tuesday’s Financial Econ sounds even worse right now. On the side: one half-finished project, two assignments, and a research paper that is far from finished. No room for clean runs—just triage and forward motion. Writing this probably doesn’t help, yet spelling out the chaos keeps it from feeling larger than it is.
Monday-Tuesday
Operating Systems—done.
Financial Econ in thirteen hours. I open my notes and accept that sleep’s likely off the schedule. The all-nighter always feels cinematic at first: silence thick enough to wade through, and my brain swapping caffeine for sheer will.
A few hours in: the glamour is gone—slides re-read start to look like palimpsests, and I’m clocking twenty-minute detours into irrelevant footnotes just to keep my eyes open. Every extra hour promised productivity; instead it lent me a kind of slow-motion clarity, the feeling of thinking through honey. By now I’m shuffling through slides at half speed, buying focus with music and the second caffeine intake for the day.
It's 4 AM. Calling it. Two-hour nap, maybe three.
This
week's Monster Energy collection
Exam is done. Energy-drink fog, sloppy arithmetic, but the thing is over. All-nighters still feel heroic until the proctor hands out the test and your neurons file for overtime pay.
Wednesday
Intermediate Macro Economics today—technically optional, but I sat for it anyway to lock in the grade. Down to two exams. Momentum’s thin—I mostly orbit my desk, scrolling and pacing, waiting for this week to get over.
Thursday
Distributed Systems went surprisingly well, but I’m wiped. I step outside feeling scattered. One more to go. Compilers. Tomorrow. A final all-nighter is inevitable, though I’m already running on fumes.
11 PM Coffee tastes like regret; the parse tables in front of me might as well be Sanskrit.
2 AM Miserable and stuck.
4 AM Resigned. I’m not learning, just orbiting the material and waiting for sunrise to grant permission to stop.
Friday
And it's done.
Campus parking already sounds much quieter for the first time all week. The whole run was messy—bad sleep, too much Monster, take-out food, lecture slides with corners curled from overuse—but it’s finished.
Will I miss it? Parts of it, yes. The late-night calm, the moment a tough concept finally clicks, the way sunrise sneaks through blinds while you’re still mid-problem. Mostly I’m glad to breathe without a countdown in my ear.
Next semester I’ll plan better. That’s the lie and the tradition.