Next week my life will become a distributed system under heavy load.
Why??
Because three things are happening at the same time:
College midsems starts Monday
GSOC proposal writing
Trying to push open source PRs before deadlines
Which means my schedule next week looks something like this:
9:00 AM -> Study for midsem
11:00 AM -> Panic
12:00 PM -> Debug failing PR
2:00 PM -> Realize I studied the wrong subject
4:00 PM -> Write proposal draft
6:00 PM -> Coffee
7:00 PM -> Another PR review request appears
9:00 PM -> Existential crisis
2:00 AM -> Finally understand the code
2:05 AM -> Maintainer asks for rebase
The Academic vs Open Source Conflict
Professors expect to focus on my exams..
Maintainers expect “Can you update the PR with the latest changes?”
My brain expects Sleep
None of these expectations are being met.
The Midsem Preparation Strategy
- Open the syllabus.
- Realise I should've started earlier.
- Open GitHub instead.
- Convince myself fixing a bug is “productive studying”..
Proposal Writing Mode
Writing proposals is a special experience.
You start confident
“This project idea is brilliant.”
Two hours later
“Do I even understand my own architecture?”
Four hours later
“Maybe I should become a farmer.”
Reality of the Week
By Thursday the system will degrade into:
caffeine driven coding
last minute studying
refreshing GitHub notifications
pretending everything is under control
Spoiler: it will not be under control.
Final Thoughts
Next week is either going to be:
extremely productive
or
an absolute disaster
But either way…
there will be commits..
Top comments (1)
As that time of year comes around again, many of you are focusing on your studies and academic commitments. At BLT, we fully understand this—having supported contributors through several GSoC cycles over the years. We wish you the very best with your studies and sincerely thank you for the valuable contributions you’ve made to the community.