A day in my life (Class 12, Kanpur), rated out of 10 by the only judge who matters: me

Every second video online is "A day in my life (study vlog, 5 a.m. wakeup, aesthetic coffee)". Mine is not that. Mine has a ceiling fan that makes a sound like a dying helicopter and a mother whose voice is the only alarm that actually works. I'm going to walk you through a normal Tuesday, with ratings. Strap in.

5:45 a.m. | the alarm

My phone alarm is set to 5:45. My body wakes up at 5:45, looks at the phone, and says: "interesting suggestion". Then four snoozes. I have a feature on my phone that tells me how many times I've snoozed and the record is eleven. The record is not something I'm proud of. Rating: 2/10. Excellent commitment to sleeping, terrible commitment to the plan.

6:20 | Mummy-ji's alarm

At 6:20 Mummy opens the door and says my full name, including my dad's name. This is the nuclear option. I'm out of bed in 0.8 seconds. You can't snooze a mother. Rating: 10/10. Most reliable device in my house.

6:30 to 7:15 | Chemistry, "morning fresh brain"

In theory this is when I do Organic. In practice I sit in front of the book with a cup of chai and my brain is still in bed. Today's fight: SN1 vs SN2. I know SN1 has a carbocation and SN2 is one step. Then I forget which one likes polar protic solvents. (SN1. Carbocation likes to be surrounded by a crowd that stabilises it. I wrote that on a sticky note and stuck it on my fan, where I'll see it every time I look up in despair.) Rating: 6/10. Chai: 11/10.

7:40 | school

Bike to school, with a friend who has never once been on time. The deal: I wait 3 minutes, then I leave without him. I've never actually left without him. I'm a coward, and also his mother would find out. Rating: 5/10 for punctuality, 9/10 for loyalty.

8:30 | the physics class

I'm going to be a good student and say what I actually learned: our Physics teacher drew a charged particle moving in a magnetic field and said something I'll remember for life: "Force is perpendicular to velocity, so the magnetic field never does work. It just changes your direction. Like a good friend. Or a bad one." The class went quiet for a second, then somebody laughed, and then everyone did. That's the best joke I've heard in school and it's also correct physics:

$\vec{F} = q(\vec{v} \times \vec{B})$

Since $\vec{F} \perp \vec{v}$, $W = \vec{F} \cdot \vec{d} = 0$. The speed stays constant, the path curls. I got that right on a test two days later because of the joke. Nothing else in my life has ever worked as well as a bad joke attached to a formula. Rating: 9/10.

1:10 | lunch break (the best 35 minutes of the day)

Four of us sit on the steps behind the lab. Today's topic: whether you can eat a samosa during an exam if nobody catches you. Conclusion: you can, but you must accept the oil on the answer sheet as a consequence. Another topic: the girl who sits in the front who has already finished the JEE Advanced syllabus in class 11 and is somehow still nice. We decided to hate her out of principle. We couldn't. Rating: 10/10. Zero study. Pure life.

4:30 | coaching

Three hours of Maths with a teacher who writes so fast that the board looks like it's trying to escape. I sit in the third row with a notebook and my pen goes, I think, about 80% as fast as his. Today's problem set was Integration. I got the first four, then fell apart on a substitution that looked clean until it wasn't. Walking out, I felt exactly like I'd been in a fight with a calculator and lost. Rating: 6/10. The notebook is 70% arrows.

7:45 | the gully cricket crime

On my way home, a bunch of small kids were playing cricket in the gully. A tennis ball came to me. I stopped the bike. I bowled one over. In my coaching shirt. In the dust. I took a wicket (a 9-year-old, he cried a bit, I felt like a monster and bought him a toffee). I'm 17 and I have a Board Exam and I'm bowling in the gully. This is the most alive I felt all day. Rating: 12/10. Do not tell my Mummy.

9 to 11:30 p.m. | the actual studying

This is when I do what I should've done all day. Mock paper. Revision. A couple of Physics problems. A couple of Maths problems. Here is the truth about me: I'm a night-person who has to pretend to be a morning-person. Between 9 and 11:30 my head is clear, my notes make sense and nothing is funny. It's the only time I'm quiet. Even my brain stops joking.

Here's the schedule I planned vs. what actually happened, because I want to be honest:

Time	The plan	What happened
5:45	Wake up, revise Organic	Snoozed x4
6:30	Chem for 1 hr	Chai for 45 min, chem for 15
4:30 pm	Maths class, take notes	Notes, mostly arrows
8:00	Dinner, then study	Cricket in the gully
11:30	Sleep	12:40 (phone)

What I've figured out

People like me, who are always making jokes, we get told "you don't take things seriously". But I do. I just can't take everything seriously all at once, the way toppers seem to. A joke is how I breathe in between. If I didn't have the 1:10 steps, the gully cricket and the one good physics line, I'd be a very sad, very tired, very well-prepared person. I'd rather be a funny, mildly under-prepared one who still passes.

I'm not saying skip studying. I studied about five hours today in total and I know that's not topper-level. But the 5 hours are real. The jokes are what make the 5 hours possible.

Overall rating for the day: 7/10. Would live again, would change nothing, would definitely not snooze eleven times.

Post your own boring Tuesday in the comments. Rated. I'm collecting them.