To give some more specific examples of intensity, behold my week of October 11 (or at least what I can remember of it that hasn't disappeared into a blur):
Monday was a day off for Columbus Day, and I was still in California doing informational interviews. I spoke to three people that day and had time for little else. That evening I took the red-eye back to California, as it was the only time-efficient way to travel that wouldn't require missing lots of classes for transit.
As it was, I bailed on my first class on Tuesday to attempt to catch up on sleep. I had a meeting with a professor that afternoon to discuss a presentation later in the week, and then a class from 2-5, followed by dinner at a professor's house.
Wednesday was simpler – I merely had a 24 hour take-home exam to do. Thursday was the day of the major presentation in one of my seminars involving running the class for 2 hours. And Friday and Saturday and Sunday was sunk into writing an impossible moot court brief. By the end of it I was wiped out.
This may sound simple and straight-forward. It's not all that many activities. But that's because I made it so. I was robbing Peter to pay Paul, skipping certain classes and ignoring various tasks so I could focus on these major (and many graded) projects that had all converged at once.
Slowly I've been trying to catch up, but in addition to the stress of having a lot to do, it's compounded by the ambient stress of feeling behind. So the catching up itself has been slow.
Posted on 10/28.