It's week 6 of the semester. You have a Calculus III midterm Tuesday, an Organic Chemistry problem set due Wednesday, a Physics lab report Friday, and you just realized your Linear Algebra professor moved a quiz up by a week. Your "system" is three notebooks, a Google Calendar you stopped updating in week 2, and a Discord channel where classmates post deadline reminders at 2 AM.

I went through this exact spiral my sophomore year as a mechanical engineering major taking 17 credits. I ended the semester with a 3.1 GPA despite knowing the material — I was bleeding points on missed homework submissions and miscalculated exam weights.…