’Twas the night before midterms, the room was a mess,
My desk was a battlefield, nothing was less.
The coffee was cold, yet I brewed it again,
Pretending that caffeine could nourish my brain.

My notes were all scattered, my focus was gone,
The outline I made was a joke all along.
I’d planned to review, yet I just couldn’t start,
For memes and regret fought a war in my heart.

---

I told myself calmly, “You’ve got this, relax.”
Then opened a textbook that looked like an axe.
Each page was a riddle, each chart was a curse,
Each topic felt cruel, and the next one was worse.

My mind did the math, though the numbers were lies—
The curve might just save me, or else my demise.
I prayed to professors who’d long lost their grace,
That mercy and grading might share the same face.

---

At midnight I reasoned I still had the night,
By one I was dizzy, by two lost the fight.
By three I was writing to no one but God,
By four, I accepted my grade would be flawed.

I whispered to Newton, to Freud, and to Marx,
“Please lend me your genius, or at least your remarks.”
I stared at the clock, and it stared right back,
Reminding me gently how discipline lacked.

---

Then morning crept in with a cynical grin,
The birds sang a chorus of chaos and sin.
I stumbled to class with my soul half-awake,
A scholar of nonsense, a fraud in my wake.

The paper arrived with a sinister gleam,
And mocked every promise I’d made in my dream.
I wrote what I could, half of it lies,
And hoped that the grader was kind and unwise.

---

So here’s to the students who gamble with fate,
Who study at dawn and submit work too late.
For midterms are cruel, but somehow they teach—
That wisdom’s not learned when it’s easy to reach.

So lift up your mug, to disaster and fear,
To all the bad habits we honor each year.
For courage, it seems, is the strangest of arts—
To fail with a smile, and call it “street smarts.”