Start at the front, not the back
Go to this week's lecture. Understand this week's material. You will not follow all of it — that's acceptable and it is much better than the alternative, because the alternative is that you're still behind in April.
Then backfill only what this week actually requires. Not everything you missed. The prerequisite that's blocking you right now, and nothing else. Most of what you missed will turn out not to be blocking anything, and you can leave it.
Backfill by dependency, not by chronology
- Find the specific thing you don't understand today, and trace it back to the missing prerequisite. That prerequisite is the only thing you need from the backlog right now.
- Ignore anything that isn't blocking you. Some topics are dead ends that appear once and never recur. Chronological catch-up gives them equal weight with the load-bearing ones.
- Use the syllabus to find out what actually connects to what — it's a dependency map and it's free.
- Ask a specific question in [office hours](/blog/office-hours): 'What do I need from weeks 3–5 to follow this?' They will tell you in two minutes and save you two weeks.
Triage the assessments honestly
You cannot do everything. Work out where the marks are, and consciously accept doing something badly. That is a decision, and making it deliberately is enormously better than making it by default at 3am on the deadline.
And the part people skip
Tell someone. A tutor, a supervisor, the department. Extensions exist, mitigating circumstances exist, and they are much more available than students believe — but only if asked for *before* the deadline, not after. The shame that prevents you from asking is the same avoidance mechanism that got you behind, and it is now compounding.