Mid-semester break is panic week.
I find myself failing to catch my breath after the first half of the semester while simultaneously stumbling to catch up with the second.
The first weekend of the break I allow myself to have off, prudently listing all of the things I will achieve before the end of the week.
How ambitious is it, really, to try to fit everything you've been meaning to do all semester into one week of break?
While I absolutely intend to get to all of my assigned readings, I also have a rather large pile of non-course related books beside my bed.
It's paramount that I get to these for my wellbeing.
I have records to listen to, washing to do and friends to catch up with.
Typically, by Monday, I find myself in bed until 12, half-heartedly explaining that I'll get to it later.
If I want to achieve anything, then I have to cram it all into the last few hours of the day.
This behaviour is particularly abhorrent as this semester I have the benefit of writing about exactly what I am interested in.
Research, for me, involves reading about boy bands and people-watching in my favourite cafes.
I've got nothing to complain about.
All I have to do is write down my thoughts and observations and eventually compile them into something coherent and cohesive.
It might even be intelligent. Though last night I did watch the One Direction movie for the fifth time and intelligence is starting to seem more and more a foreign concept.
Top of my list of concerns is my rather extensive French writing project.
I'm watching people I know and wondering if I can sneak them into my condensed reworking of George Perec's An Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris without their noticing.
I'm unsure if this counts as study.
I'm wondering exactly how many coffees (and how much money) it will take to observe 5000 words worth of goings-on.
In Dunedin, I'm not even sure I can write 5000 words without someone I know slipping in somewhere along the line.
The sun sets and I realise I've missed another afternoon of observation.
In guilty consolation, I remind myself that though cafes aren't usually open late in the afternoon, the internet will still be there in all its readily accessible glory.
I'll be able to read articles on boy bands to my heart's content, and all in the name of research.
If I'm perfectly honest, there's not an awful lot of difference between this week and any other week.
Being from Dunedin, I have no place to go back to for a week, no real excuse to live off parental meals and heating.
On Friday, my flatmates and I were filled with elation at the promise of having a holiday. By Tuesday, the joy has largely worn off.
After three years, I'd have thought my high school hangover would have worn off and I'd realise the university isn't really giving us a breather.
We just don't have classes for a week.
And somehow we're supposed to cobble together a schedule of sleeping in, casual drinking and desperate study catch-up.
A week is just long enough to completely reset my sleeping patterns.
I'm not sure what I will have achieved by Saturday afternoon, but I'm hoping I can allow myself a second weekend off in order to catch my breath before classes start again.
Truthfully, I'm not overly optimistic.
If I've watched myself suffer on a Sunday night once, then the chances are it will happen a thousand times over.
But in spite of my mounting concerns, maybe it's just nice enough just to think of all the things I'd do with a week off.
- Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
