How Not To Do Swotvac: A Cautionary Tale (Cara)

My name is Cara, and I’m a stressoholic. Welcome to my Swotvac. I’m currently wrapped in a blanket and perched in a tiny room on the second floor of my college which contains nothing but four squashy armchairs, a heater, and a keyboard. Peering down into the quad, I feel secure and hidden away. In any other week of the semester, this would be a glorious day…

It’s Friday, at last! This week has been such mad rush of revision, insanity, and salted snacks that it’s hard to know where to start filling you in on my life.

Basically, I am dreadful at managing my time, and have by this point of the week, given up on following normal human day-night divisions. My standard day currently runs something like the following

A Do-It-Yourself Guide to My Swotvac:

• 12pm Wake up. Do at least some of the following: wash, dress, put on shoes. Two outta three will do. Ingest caffeine.

• 12:30-2:30 pm Amuse yourself wandering the city on foot or cycle, pretending that exams and essays are simply part of the ridiculous bureaucratic system of the uni which you reject and don’t support. Ingest caffeine

• 3:30-6:30 pm Study manically in a room full of frantic commerce students, feeling certain that you’ll fail everything if you don’t perfectly understand depolarisation in terms of ion channels.

• 6:30 pm Give up and go to bed.

• 6:30-10:30 pm Sleep gloriously. On waking, ingest caffeine.

• 10:30 pm -4 am Return to commerce students and work furiously, oblivious of the time, and refuting claims that it’s too late to work.

• 4:30 am Retire to bed with a racing mind and super-alert nervous system due to your wildly excessive caffeine intake. Consider the irony of the fact that you were studying the effects of sleep deprivation and caffeine over-consumption on the neural networks, and giggly groggily.

(Listen to the bin-men tour the college crescent.

Listen to the food deliveries van.

Resist urge to check time.)

• 5:30 am- 12 pm. Glorious sleep. Highlight of the day.

And repeat!

During this failure of a week, you must follow certain protocols:

Food: Your insane body clock will rarely sync with college mealtimes, so get used to living out of a vending machine and/or the enormous bowls of chocolate set out in the Junior Common Room.

Drink: While it may be tempting to curl up to a bottle of whiskey while fighting the I-Hate-University-Blues, the only liquids you need are black, sweet, and highly caffeinated. Cycle between diet coke, coffee, and strong mugs of tea.

Dress: Anything and everything salvaged from the washing you haven’t have time to do due to revision.

Disclaimer: If you follow this Swotvac regime, you may a) develop severe psychological and cardiac disorders, b) fail everything or c) come out with an H1 average and no recollections of first semester. The choice is in your hands, and the author accepts no responsibility for your medical bills.