It happened during finals week, at 2 AM. My desk is covered with crumpled notes. History exam in four hours, physics at noon. My eyes couldn't focus on the textbook anymore - the words kept swimming together, and I was desperate enough to believe that what I needed wasn't sleep, but more caffeine. I reached for that third energy drink – one of those blue ones my friend swears by. "Extreme focus," they can promise. Thirty minutes later, I wasn't focused at all. My heart pounded against my ribs like it was trying to escape. My hands shook so badly I knocked over my water bottle (thankfully capped). And there was this bizarre buzzing behind my eyes that made it feel like my brain was vibrating. When I finally crashed around 5:30, I didn't drift off peacefully. It felt more like hitting concrete after jumping from a moving car. I bombed that physics exam, by the way. Turns out memorizing formulas is pretty challenging when you're simultaneously trying to con...
by Mehar Kaur Minhas