Anyone can work hard for one week. The skill is working steadily for a whole semester.

Short bursts of intensity are easy to produce and prove very little. The real test is a whole semester, where the novelty has gone, the weather is bad and nothing is exciting, and you keep doing a moderate amount anyway. Sprinting is a mood. Steadiness is a method, and it wins over any distance that matters.

Choose a workload you could sustain for twelve weeks rather than the one that impresses you today. Write it down and deliberately make it smaller than you think you can manage. Then protect it on the dull weeks, which are the only weeks that test it.