A brutal semester feels permanent in week eight. Then it’s finals, then it’s over. Check the calendar, not your mood.

A hard stretch flattens your sense of time. From inside it there is no visible end, so it stops feeling like a period and starts feeling like a condition, which is a trick of exhaustion rather than a fact about your life. The calendar still knows how many weeks are left even when you cannot feel it.

Count the weeks actually remaining and write the number somewhere you will see it. Mark the midpoint and the end, and watch the number drop as a measurement rather than a hope. On the bad days, ask the calendar instead of asking your mood.