In June 2025 I tried to sit ten exams in ten days, and I passed all ten. The result, though, is the least interesting part of the story: what is worth telling is how I got there, and what it cost.
They were practically all the exams of the second semester of the first year and almost all of the second year: macroeconomics, microeconomics, statistics, business analysis, accounting, corporate finance, private law, public law, commercial law, labour law. Written and oral, subjects of numbers and subjects of words, all together. Meanwhile the companies carried on as always, and at home there were three small children, who in terms of time are the most demanding thing of all.
Why try?
At first I did not want to sit them all, I wanted to try them. I wanted to understand how I would hold up under examination, at what pace, and what happens to your head at the fifth written exam in a week. Then, since I was trying them, I also prepared them properly, because trying something without preparing it is not in me.
In hindsight it was also the test run of the backward plan I have written about: if ten exams in one session were possible, three years in two certainly were.
How do you prepare ten exams in three months?
With a written schedule, very detailed, in which every subject had its fixed blocks in the day. One morning two hours on one thing, one evening one hour on another, and so on for three months. Blocks that were not long but certain, always at the same time, so my head already knew what it would do without having to decide each time.
I had asked the AI to condense the topics chapter by chapter, starting from the course materials. Then I had asked it to explain them only with examples taken from the world I knew: a company, a contract, a warehouse, a negotiation. At 41, abstract memory is what it is, but the memory of things you have lived is huge, and a concept hooked to a face sinks in at the first go. What had to stay in my head went through the pen: the graphs of micro and macro, the keywords of the four law exams, the formulas. I told the story in the piece on the tutor that quizzes me.
The time, as for the whole degree, came from the gaps. I travelled a great deal, between 2024 and 2025: Vietnam, Cambodia twice, New York twice, Frankfurt, Beijing. On planes I studied with the laptop and the AI, in the car I revised out loud, like with a coursemate who never gets tired.
What did it cost?
A lot, and not only me. In the weeks before, even at home I was not the most pleasant company, because I was objectively struggling and struggle shows. And three small children do not wait for you to finish the statistics chapter. I write it because without this part it would look like a walk in the park.
And yet there was a strange thing, which I understood only afterwards: every exam, for me, was a joy. I could not wait for it to come, like a race or the next tournament in a video game. It was the moment I could measure myself, see my level, understand whether it was enough or where I had to improve. I believe that, more than the plan and more than the AI, is what kept me standing in those ten days. For me the exam was not an obstacle to get past, it was the reason I was studying.
The professors, for their part, were always very kind, even with a 41-year-old showing up for ten exams in ten days.
Would I do it again?
Once, yes, and in fact I did it once. As a habit, no: the backward plan exists precisely so that you never have to sit ten exams in ten days. But that session gave me something no plan gives, which is knowing what I can take.
At work the result depends on a thousand things and a thousand people. There it depended only on me, and I paid the bill gladly. If you have a session ahead and it looks too full, the number of exams matters less than you think. What matters is knowing where your limit is, and finding it, at least once, is worth all the effort.
Sources: no external data. Dates, subjects and pace are mine, and they are not advice.
