✨Day in the life of a college student during finals week - self reflection blog
Tags: productivity, opensource, beginners
Published: 2022-12-10 08:01:48

Dear college students, 

I am sure we all can relate to this. 

Finals week is here, and everything is about to go to..... _bleep_

Why are all the assignments due on the same day?

I sleep and wake up at unusual times. 

*Maybe I can implement a few more features before sleep for my cloud computing assignment. Maybe just one more cup of coffee will keep me awake for a few more hours. Well no, the extra cup of coffee just made me jittery and now I am left with a racing heart.* 

There is no sleeping schedule anymore. There are just random hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. 

Upon waking up, I check my email and Slack and Teams messages. 
My messages are somewhat like this:

"CI/CD failed from the flutter pull request I had done." Great! 

"Your assignment 4 is due tonight." Awesome. 

"Your promo code that is set to expire in 24 hours for Ugg boots."

I panic. Because the decision is tough. I have just 24 hours to decide that  if I fit in another pair of Ugg boots in my meticulously planned Christmas shopping list already containing 993732 items, will I suffer financially?   

## _Back to reality...._ 💭

I panic. I realize I have no time for Christmas shopping. It needs to happen after the finals. *Well, will the stuff I like be out of stock before the finals?* 

I think of this, and I stress even more. 

The Uber Eats bill is piling up fast.  

My bank app is displaying a warning message stating there might be a possibility of duplicate charges from the same merchant. No mistakes there. It's all me. 

I pour my Starbucks coffee beans into my french press. The first sip of the morning coffee feels like an elixir. I eat my daily dose of morning eggs and protein wraps and promptly sit to study. 


## _7 hours later_ ⏰

I  finally debugged the flutter issue I was working on. Debugged. It all looks good. All the checks pass now. ...

I take a small break, stretch out my legs, and eat a meal...

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I notice new stress pimples. 

## _Time to study again_ 🥹📖


## _Another 6 hours later_ ⏰

I think to myself, "wow that was a productive 6 hours". 
At this point though I feel my cognitive functions declining. 
Maybe I should nap or maybe I should get more coffee. 

 I look at my TODO list and  I get a momentary sense of deep satisfaction every time I mark something as done; but then I realize  I have a lot more in blues and pinks than greens.
 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gdksux128fh2dq5uw02w.png)


This is what a typical day for me looks like leading up to finals. But this is neither healthy nor sustainable. So, don't be like me during finals week. This semester I took five difficult courses, but I am glad this is my last semester. 

In my previous blog - I set myself some really big goals for December..So far, I am really satisfied with how much I have accomplished. I also realize that if I focus, really focus on my work without distraction for hours, I can get so much done.


## What's going good? 😃 ✨

1) The open-source contributions are going well! 
	-  I was able to successfully make pull requests to [flutter](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/pull/116705) and to [my-photohub](https://github.com/humphd/my-photohub/pull/34)
	-  I am currently working on responding to the issues I worked on. 

2) I have also been keeping up with the [advent of cyber](https://tryhackme.com/christmas) but fell behind on the [advent of code](https://adventofcode.com/). But not to worry. I am going to catch up right after the finals. 

3) I have also responded to some changes requested for a  pull request I did last month for [fig/autocomplete](https://github.com/withfig/autocomplete/pull/1714) and had it successfully merged yesterday. 

4) Most of my assignments are complete. Thanks to careful planning, Uber Eats and the Thai food store 5 mins away from me. 

## What's not going good 🥲

1) I am behind on code reviews and I realize I should put more effort into it. 
2) I missed out on writing two blogs for my static site generator.
3) I had no time to workout for the last two weeks 

Thank you all for reading! Next blog will be filled with technical details about my  pull requests made for flutter and my-photohub. 

Also, I just started a brand new desk setup and studygram on instagram... Please do give me a follow on [Foam On Latte](https://www.instagram.com/foamonlatte/)!