It’s the weekend before a grueling two weeks of finals. And yet, I found myself unable to concentrate as much as I had wished this past week, leaving a mountain of studying to do in the 3 days before four back-to-back finals. As my first final was Physiology, I decided to study that last – and prayed my short-term memory could pretend to be long term memory for at least a little while. Thus, I decided to get Neuroscience and Biochemistry out of the way beforehand. After my third mini, I realized that Neuroscience made the most sense to me when I reviewed it in a study group setting. It was the best way of focusing on the important issues and realising how questions could/would be phrased.

Friday night I got almost all of old Biochem material done before reviewing the new Neuroscience material. Neuro takes us about 4 hours to review, after which I decided I might as well start on the new Biochem material. I like to have read the new material at least once before I start actually studying for a test. As the night slowly gave way to dawn, my friend decided that he wanted to watch the India vs Sri Lanka Cricket World Cup Final. Deciding that I was game for staying up till 5AM to watch it (this decision having been made on little sleep, and therefore not the best one), I ended up watching the whole 8 hours of the game. This meant that I had literally been awake for 24 hours, from 1PM Friday to 1PM Saturday. This completely wrecked my sleeping schedule for finals week, especially since I had to pull an all-nighter for two exams, and got about 4 hours of sleep for the other two exams in that first week.

Now this may seem like a ridiculous and highly stupid thing to do, and I fully agree. To this day, I can’t understand how fatigue was an excuse for me to make such a terrible decision, especially once it was obvious that India would win. It was sheer bull-headedness, the stubbornness of which idiocy is forged, that allowed that to happen. However, there was a glow of patriotic pride when we managed to finally win the World Cup after 28 years. Even though I do not like cricket, and count myself as much an American as an Indian, the fact remains that the victory meant a lot. Through the ravages of exhaustion, fatigue, and a premonition of dread for the coming finals, this single thought trumpets louder than the others: INDIA WON!

by Prakash Jayanthi, Class of 2014