Life between deadlines

That's how you feel like when you're going through the November of the senior year of IB: living between deadlines. Or to be precise, there is no life between deadlines. There are just deadlines. There is the deadline for submitting a lab design for biology IA, which was today (I didn't submit it), and there is the deadline on next Monday for returning the very final version of EE. Then there is the deadline for psychology IA that should have been done ages ago, but our teacher was merciful. And then there is the psychology test that I, because there are no other words to describe it, fucked up.
By saying that there is no life between deadlines, I mean that you take a piece of work that has to be returned soon, panic because you have no idea what to do, figure it out somehow while forgetting what such things as 'social life', 'fun' and 'outside world' mean. In the matter of fact, 'life' becomes an absurd concept. Then comes the happy day when you return the essay, project or whatever task it is (before or after the deadline), and suddenly you remember that you are young and free to live and experience. However, this hallucination dies very soon when you check your To do- list and start struggling with the next deadline. And on the cycle goes. You take a deep breath after each deadline and keep on working. If some poor soul (like me...) made the mistake of thinking "I'll work hard for few weeks or even months, have things done and take it easy for the rest of the semester", here's the cruel reality: the work never ends.
I feared November the whole semester. Now it's here. November means that deadlines become more real than ever. Applying becomes real. If earlier I could procrastinate for a day, now I can't even dream of that. It's all about school and figuring out what to do with my life now. It's like a wake up call to real life. Right now I don't have a life, and yet right now I should be extremely aware of the one life I have and make sure it will take the direction I want it to take. Some weeks, maybe a bit over a month, ago I could wake up in the morning and think that if I just got up and survived through the school day, I could come back home in the afternoon and relax for a moment. Do some compulsory schoolwork and then focus on something I actually like doing. Draw, write, go for a run. Now I wake up in the morning, go to school, come back home, open my laptop and stare at the screen until I get something done. And think about nothing. Nothing that relates to school and nothing that relates to the things I love doing. Because if (and when) I do, my stress level jumps so high I want to lay down on the floor and cry.
In a nutshell, living between deadlines on a program that was designed for people who are the perfect opposite of you means learning to live in the very moment. Thinking about tomorrow is a mental suicide. Yet I dare to say that if I could turn back time and choose another school or program, I wouldn't.