Post-exam blues
‘Now there’s just a void’
After his exams, artificial intelligence student Michal Tešnar from Czechia planned to relax – but for some reason, he couldn’t. ‘My previous routine was all about hustle and intense studying. Exams were the main source of my motivation. That cost me a lot of energy without getting any feedback on my efforts. So now there’s just a void. I suddenly got really lazy, which made me feel guilty, but I was too exhausted to deal with it.’
Michal didn’t celebrate the last exam with a long night out, because his friends were busy that day. ‘That was a mistake’, he says. Instead, he crashed on the couch and scrolled endlessly through his phone, which he didn’t actually enjoy. His books and study notes were still on his desk, reminding him that the stress might not be completely over. ‘What if I have to do a resit?’
He did have one idea, something that had been niggling at the back of his mind. So the next day, he dusted off his racing bike and went for a ride to Delfzijl, which helped release some tension and gave him energy. ‘Fixing my broken sleep schedule will be a tough one, though.’
International and European law student Matej Nemčok from Slovakia finished his last exam on Wednesday at 9 p.m. But instead of having a much-deserved lie-in, the next morning he woke up early, his brain ready to grind again. For that, he has his own metaphor: ‘Exam season is like being chased by a tiger’, he says. ‘Your body gets used to it and keeps running, but once the exams are over and the tiger disappears, you start to look for it. What am I supposed to do now there’s no tiger chasing me?’
Last block, he and his classmates did a ‘speedrun’ of revising seven weeks worth of material in one day. ‘When I found out that I passed, it felt nice and scary at the same time, because I realised it was actually possible to study like that.’
Salsa night
The strategy did have some nasty consequences for the group, though; because they skipped too much sleep, their immunity went down the drain and they all got sick once the exam was over. ‘So we’re never doing that again.’
This block, twelve hours of repetitive daily studying not only exhausted him, but also made him feel guilty for neglecting his priorities and his ‘old life’. ‘Friends had to wait, I didn’t go to the gym, eat proper food or do any of the other things I really enjoyed doing.’
So when the tiger stopped chasing him, Matej lost his routine and suddenly felt empty. His remedy was to fill it with something energetic like a salsa night with friends. ‘But I also wanted to try something new and involve other parts of my brain. So I started learning to play the guitar and spent some time with myself.’
