‘It’s all about pacing yourself,’ said self-proclaimed academic guru and proud holder of a 5.1 GPA, Tom Roberts (21). ‘You can’t burn out too early, doing too many readings and notes and all that wack shit,’ he muttered, watching his ninth straight episode of The Chernobyl Diaries (the spinoff sitcom).

‘It’s a marathon, not a sprint.’

Tom has had a comparatively mild run of two exams across two weeks this exam block, but he still insists on telling anyone and everyone who is unfortunate enough to fall within earshot that it’s all about studying ‘smart,’ not hard.

But sources close to Mr Roberts have revealed the truly dire nature of his academic position.

With the Property Law A exam coming up this Friday, Tom’s failure to watch a single lecture or read a single case is likely to bite him in the phat ass, not least of all when he tries to spell ‘indefeasible.’

‘He’s genuinely pretty fucked for it,’ reported Tom’s tutorial acquaintance and sometimes friend, Aneka Petrou (20). Discussing the time she heard Tom gloating about not having even cracked the spine on the textbook, she revealed he ‘doesn’t have a clue what a textbook is,’ (a possibly unreasonable call, but who are we to judge).

Even if we took Tom at his word, the fact this is a marathon still means some running should be done. Although, for everyone’s sake, we hope it’s not one of those funny marathons where someone who has trained for four straight months just deadset shits themselves with 2 kilometres to go and can’t run anymore.

So funny.

Tom’s seminar leader (or what the wizened fourth-years would describe as ‘tutor’) claims that Tom’s complete lack of engagement in the class is likely to cause him ‘severe pain when he reads the six-page problem question.’ But then again, academics are massive nerds, and they read for the fun of it, so what would they know?

Only time would tell, and if time could talk, it would probably say things like ‘Hey, I’m Time - can I buy you a Belgian pale ale?’

Truly fascinating scenes here. More to come.