Now that we’re well into the Christmas holidays, a little look back into the chaos before the end of Michaelmas term can be appreciated from a distance away from the trauma of coming out of a 3pm lecture to a sky that is pitch black. Here are some characters you might have spotted towards the last weeks of an eventful 2025 Michaelmas term…
The deadline warrior
The most humbling encounter during my last week at Durham was running into a fellow English Literature student with the same Monster, same hobo fit and hunchback laptop stare desperately trying to finish the essays that were procrastinated. These people are incapable of saying anything other than “I’ve got an essay due in!”, “Have you handed in this essay yet?” and “Does anyone want to go Billy B?”. These people drag their poor friends to the library to watch them crash out over an essay for hours at a time (guilty as charged, sorry to my lovely friends). Ultimately, these people will end up handing in their assignments at the crack of dawn, sleeping for 12 hours, going home, and then sleeping for another 12 hours to catch up on sleep and recover from overdosing on energy drinks.
The overachiever
There’s always someone who’s done all the reading, caught up on all lectures and has no academic stress in their life. Their laundry is done, meal prep is done for the week, they’re having a nice cup of tea at 10pm tucked into bed ready to get up for their 9am. Whilst this is a very, very, very small minority of students, I know some of you exist out there… and to that I say, please stop being so perfect and leave some motivation for the rest of us.
The one who has already left
I am looking directly at the people who were posting about their posh ski trips and holidays before term was completely over. I must admit, the jealousy of people leaving before I had even finished all my deadlines for the year was soul-crushing. These people have either been talking about their holidays the whole month leading up to Christmas or have done an Irish goodbye that none of their flatmates knew about until they checked Snap Maps. To be honest, I wish I were you and I should’ve just skived all my last lectures and taken an earlier train home.
The one who says “I’m going to catch up over Christmas”
If I had a pound for every time I heard someone say “Oh, let me just skip this lecture. I’ll just catch up over Christmas…”, I would genuinely be a billionaire. These are the people who tried to keep up at the beginning. 2 hours at the library without fail, every day. Now, as fantasies of going home to free laundry and a good home cooked meal rapidly approach, you’ll find them doing anything but studying. Whether they are tucked into bed with a nice hot drink, living it up at Babs, or procrastinating by cleaning their room (which they would never do under other circumstances), the mountain of lecture recordings to catch up on are looming over them. Will these lectures be caught up with during Christmas? Realistically, no. However, do they feel better about telling themselves that the Christmas holiday is the time for an academic miracle? 1000% Yes.
The Scrooge
These are the people who had to make sure their monthly budget REALLY stretched out during the last week. Struggle meals were had to save for the last Babs trip of the term, the cheeky coffee that was usually indulged in had to be ignored, the sweet treat from Library cafe absent from the weekly splurge in a desperate attempt to save money. The Scrooge usually won’t ask for money back, but in the lead up to Christmas, you’ll hear them saying “Sorry, can you transfer me that 70p for the bag of crisps we shared the other night.” That extra 70p counts; whatever to make looking at the bank account numbers a little less terrifying.
The formal/ball attendee
These are the people who post about themselves being at a Christmas ball or formal every day leading up to the holidays. At some point, you do have to stop and wonder… How do they pull out a new dress for the dozens of formals that have happened in the last week? Of course, these people are serving without fail each time but I do wonder how they afford to go to so many balls and how they afford to pull out a new outfit each and every time. Regardless, these people are the ones who have tight knit college friend groups and are oddly patriotic about their college.
Featured image via Canva.
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