1. Disbelief

At this point in time, you jut can’t believe you’ve let it go this long. You really should have started studying a week ago, or at least two days ago. But no, now you’re stuck pulling an all-nighter and praying to God that you are able to learn everything in the next 12 hours.

2. The First Breakdown

Anxiety really starts to sink in at this point in time. You become full of depression as you think that no amount of studying or caffeine will help you pull a half decent grade out of this test. You consider heading home and just going to bed, or better yet going out after one more look over your notes.

3. Understanding

When looking over your notes though, things start to make sense. You remember being in lecture for some of these topics, better yet you remember how to do some of these problems. Maybe you’re not completely screwed... maybe you can walk away from this test with a good grade after all.

4. False Confidence

You do a practice problem and get it right. It’s like you didn’t even need to study at all. You tell yourself this class was common sense anyways and there’s no way you’re going to do poorly. You decide to take a practice test to confirm that you in fact know everything and are set for tomorrow.

5. Reality Check

HAHA! J/K! You’re nowhere near ready for this exam. Your practice exam instead shows you that you know about 60% of the material and half of the correct answers you guessed. Going out is completely out of the picture, as is leaving any time soon.

6. The Second Breakdown

You’re just trying to hold back tears at this point. If you haven’t learned anything in the past several hours, will you learn anything at all tonight? Why didn’t you start studying a few days ago? How are you going to explain this bad grade to your parents? But through the tears, you decide that you have to keep going.

7. Caffeine

At this point, it’s incredibly late at night and your brain starts shutting down but you can’t stop studying now. So off to get coffee you go (maybe even a Five Hour Energy if you’re feeling like you’re going to be up for a long time). Once you put unspeakable amounts of caffeine in your system, you’re ready for anything.

8. Social Media Check

It’s been such a long time since you first arrived at the library and you get curious how the outside world lives. You see pictures of all your friends out and wish that you were out too. But you don’t stop at checking just one form of social media. No, you check every account you’ve ever created. Until you realize that you just wasted 20 minutes and still have lots of work to do.

9. Question Everything

What did you just waste your time doing? Why have you wasted as much time as you have? Are your notes even correct? Why is your answer for that problem wrong? Why is your life so hard? Does this teacher want you to fail? Will there be a curve? What’s most relevant to the test?

10. Get Sh*t Done

You’ve wasted too much time. It’s time to actually accomplish something, anything really. You start rereading your notes once again, followed by more practice problems anyone should ever have to do ever. You look at lecture slides and even re-do homework. You really need to understand this, but no matter how much you do, there’s still this lurching feeling in your gut that you’re going to fail.

11. The Third Breakdown

YOU’RE SO SCREWED. No matter how many times you did those problems, you’re still getting some of them wrong. Why can’t you get the numbers that they want you to be getting? This breakdown more than anything else is caused by sleep deprivation, so you realize it’s time for more caffeine and keep studying.

12. Practice Exams

You’ve done everything else you can think of to study, so it’s time to take every single practice test in existence, ever. Some problems look familiar, some take you longer but you continue to do them regardless. You set timers and everything and see if you can do the problems and if you can do them in the time restraint the test will have.

13. Finish/Give Up

By this point, it’s the early hours of the morning and you’ve done everything you can to study. You accept that you’re as prepared as you’ll ever be, given the circumstances. You decide to go home and go to sleep because no more studying will even help you at this point. You say a prayer and head on your way hoping that it was all worth it.