With his AirPods in, textbooks clutched tight, and triple-shot flat white cradled in his hands, it’s a pretty safe bet to say Marcus Pattinson (20) is taking mid-sems alarmingly seriously.

The third-year Arts/Commerce student told himself two weeks ago that he really needed to get his act together, and whilst that hasn’t physically manifested in anything resembling getting his act together, it has certainly shown up in Marcus’ coffee order.

Assuming he can use caffeine as a shortcut to getting weirdly serious about uni, Marcus has upped his intake to a regulation triple-shot, and is reportedly considering donning the Black Mask (or, as it’s known to the commonfolk, drinking long blacks). But for outside observers, Marcus’ ostensible attempts to ‘get serious’ are amounting to little more than pathetic failures.

‘Get over yourself, mate, it’s a 20% multiple-choice exam,’ said one of Marcus’ friends in a hushed, intimate interview with The Obiter in the Law Library disabled bathrooms.

‘He’s been chirping away so much about how it’s time to knuckle down, but the hardest I’ve seen him work this past week was when he was deciding which packet of new highlighters to buy.’

‘You can’t highlight a better personality.’

That extremely bitter interview aside, it’s become rapidly obvious to everyone on campus that a coffee-focused approach to mid-sems is a bit tragic, and ultimately, everyone should just chill out until the day before their Torts exam, whereupon they immediately freak out and lose their minds.

This was well thought-out! No more to come.