[tinco]

I had slacked off for a semester in university and got 0 study credits, where nominal study performance should have yielded 30 credits (EC). This worried me because some of those points were part of my freshmen year and the university had just instated a rule that students entering their third year without having completed their first year would be expelled (the p-in-2 rule) designed to get rid of slackers prevalent in the otherwise lenient European style university.

My best friend was also faced with a harsh deadline at the time, having to finish his bachelor degree before a certain date so we made a covenant to study at the library together this entire day, every day, for that quarter.

I made a crazy ambitious plan to complete exams for 9 courses, worth 45 EC in total. There was some low hanging fruit that I just had to read the course material for, but also some (for me) hard courses. I think 2 calculus courses, Algorithms Data structures and Complexity and a Discrete Mathematics I. Especially that last one was giving me a hard time, having failed the exam three times already even though most of my friends felt it was a fairly easy maths course.

I look back at those few months fondly. Although I was socially isolated, not going to parties not seeing any friends besides just that one, I grew closer to him and I felt good because we just were so productive.

Of those 9 courses I failed two, yielding 35 EC in just one quarter. I know there's geniuses out there that do that sort of thing on the regular, but for me just passing a single maths test was an achievement, let alone passing 6 more in the same week.