'Just let me pass today': Why corporate life still feels like exam season for this Bengaluru worker?

Leaving school behind never meant leaving behind exam anxiety — it simply swapped report cards for performance reviews and homework for pending emails.

Three years into her corporate career, Bengaluru-based professional Charu Gupta says her workdays still carry the faint, familiar hum of exam season. In a recent Instagram video, she described how little that constant sense of evaluation has changed since her school years.

"It's been three years since I've been working at a job, but even today I feel like I'm in school and my exams are going on. It's like, 'Just let me pass today somehow, let today just get over at the office somehow, and I'll be better prepared for tomorrow's exam,'" she said.

The comparison runs deeper than the daily grind. Unfinished tasks piling up on her laptop feel suspiciously like homework trailing her long after office hours.

"So after going home, just like having to do assignments or homework, I have so much pending work that I'm supposed to do, but I won't do it. Today is Saturday. Now I won't make any plans because I have a lot of work to do, but I won't do that work either," Gupta added.

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The result is a familiar corporate trap: the work never gets done, and neither does the relaxing. Gupta described spending her weekends suspended between procrastination and panic, unable to switch off while pending tasks linger in the back of her mind.

"I will just be anxious and I'll panic all the time until Sunday night arrives. And when I have no other option left, only then will I open it, finish just the most urgent things, and shut it down. And I'll just pray, 'God, please just help me pass tomorrow as well somehow.' Why am I like this?" she asked.

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Her question resonated widely. The video drew hundreds of comments from viewers who said Gupta had put words to a feeling they quietly live with.

"I thought I am the only one," wrote one user, while a manager admitted, "Bro, I'm the manager and I feel the same."

Others summed up the relentless grind in their own words: "Every Monday feels like a new test," one wrote. Another noted, "In school there were two-three exams a year, here it's every day."