The Five Types Of People You See In Year 3

• The 99%-depressive syndrome top-of-class

Zap. Zap - they've done something you need 10 seconds to do in 2. For the entire period of neurobiology, with the teacher jetting at a 10-word per second speed, they almost got everything down - even the lame jokes serving to reinforce your memory to a particularly complex pathway. They won't be satisfied by 99%. It's either 100% or nil. Now go away so that I can finish my 45th review of nervous system!

• The take-your-own-sweet-time countryside senior
  

"What's the hurry?" they ask. They don't mind spending an hour waiting for lunch, and they can stand in line for 3 hours for a concert ticket on the eve of exams. "It happens when you're with friends," they commented on your complaints that whenever you hang out with them they always take 45 minutes to decide where to eat and a further 120 minutes to actually arrive there. If this is Year 3, this is no more than a holiday in the countryside for them.

• The tea-breaker

They get up every 20 minutes. Go for a break every 30 minutes, and sleep every hour while studying. Their notes - as empty as new. Their textbooks could literally be re-sold as new without people realizing it's second-hand. And yet they don't seem to be doing too badly. You sneak into their room and ransack their bags for secret notes - no avail. Only one thing will tell you how they do this - wait till they die and dissect their brains.

• The pressure-cooked poor child
  

Under immense pressure, people can do all sort of things just to escape the steam a little. Kick the floorboards a hundred times before you sleep; wear a scarf and simulate the day when you hang yourself; stand on the table while studying; day-dreaming the day you got sworn into the White House...

• The understanding partner who'd do anything
  

Those who are lucky to have secured (ok, this word is a little controversial) a partner before this will find an emotionally-stable Mr. Nice Guy useful under many circumstances - buying lunch when exam's due in the afternoon, carrying books back to the dorm in preparation for tomorrow's exam, laundering your lab coat when you're happily partying after the exam, driving you to stock up provisions for the next exams. Anything - as long as it don't involve sitting the exams for you.