If we were having coffee, I’d say make mine rocket fuel. That’s the only way I’ve been able to combat the dreadful midday slump that plagues me each afternoon. Have you ever been so tired that you feel drunk? The kind of tired that congeals the very air around you? Bogs you down, slows your step and mires your mind as if in quicksand? That’s how I feel after my first two weeks of classes. But, I take some comfort in the knowledge that every veterinary student feels that way, if not constantly, at least frequently.

Each day over my lunch break, I feel my strength stretch like my lengthening shadow as the midday sun continues its arc overhead. Classes resume, and my strength grows thinner, a gossamer veil less capable of concealing my involuntary inattentiveness with each passing hour. When evening comes, I fight my fatigue to spend a few hours studying, scrounge up some sustenance, and collapse into bed at an indecently late hour. A few hours later, I pull myself up by the bootstraps to face another day. Proudly displaying my sunken, purple under-eye crescents as battle scars, and with more rocket fuel coffee in hand, I might just make it through.