Hello everyone,

Golden Week is over. The Wakaba Festival is finished. The weather is getting warmer. The school year is finally starting to feel normal. Unfortunately, this also means we are entering a very dangerous period of the school year. Why dangerous? Because midterm tests are coming.

Right now, many of you are still in “Golden Week mode.” Sleep schedules are scrambled. Motivation has disappeared. Some people are probably still mentally on vacation. At the moment, two kinds of students exist.

The first group says:
“I should start studying soon.”

The second group says:
“I still have plenty of time.”

Strangely, these two groups are often the same people. This time of year is always interesting because students know the tests are coming, but the tests still feel far away. Two weeks sounds like a long time. Then suddenly it becomes one week. Then three days. Then the night before the test, students open their notebooks dramatically at 11:47 PM and start reviewing.

Of course, every year students promise themselves that this year will be different.

“This time I will study early.”
“This time I will not use my phone.”
“This time I will sleep properly.”

And every year, somehow, many students end up reviewing vocabulary while half asleep at midnight with snacks scattered around their desk. (I always like Koala March… Match? I don’t know.) It is one of the great traditions of student life. But honestly, midterms are less scary than they seem. The difficult part is just getting started.

Even studying for a short time each day makes a big difference. Thirty minutes today is much more powerful than five desperate hours the night before a test. So if you have not started preparing for midterms yet… this is your sign. Not tomorrow, not this weekend, today.

At the very least, maybe find where your textbooks are first.