Update Tuesday, January 15, 4 p.m.: TU/e has announced that the upcoming exam week will be postponed one week. As a result, the exam period will begin January 27. Read more about this decision here.

In the Auditorium, we find Tess Enklaar, a first-year Industrial Design student preparing for the Data Analytics course. “As it happens, I had already downloaded the presentations the lecturers posted online.” The cyberattack even has a small silver lining for her. “On Sunday, I found out through a WhatsApp group that the pitch we were supposed to give on Monday had been canceled. We do still get the points if we’d already turned in the related assignment.” Which she had. She would prefer to be able to work on the practice assignments and review previous exams as well, but that is not possible. “It’s only Tuesday; hopefully, it will be resolved by next week.”

Low stress

The only thing that can go wrong for Polish Mechanical Engineering student Krezisimir Hyzyk is the poster presentation. He explains this to us in MetaForum, not far from the print shop that currently cannot print his poster. He has no trouble preparing for his two exams next week as he had already saved all the course materials on his laptop. And if he doesn’t meet the poster deadline – today at 6 PM – then neither will a large portion of the 52 other groups.

First-year Industrial Engineering student Willem Veekens isn’t worried either. He is having coffee with two members of the Dignitatus society. “I’m using the same approach as I did for my first exam period because I’m still logged into Canvas and have access to everything.”

High stress

Students gearing up for a final sprint are in more trouble. Fabian Lucas Luijckx is feeling the pressure because he has to submit his Bachelor’s Final Project by Friday. “I collected data from ProRail and still have to run some analyses with statistics program SPSS. But that’s not possible now because you need to be connected to the TU/e network to use the license. I asked the WhatsApp helpline TU/e set up yesterday when I would be able to use SPSS again, but they didn’t have an answer for me.” His stress increases by the day. “I’m still logged into the program, but it’s constantly searching for a connection. During the moments it stops that search, I can do a quick regression analysis. That’s how I’ve been working since Monday morning.”

Intense pressure

For Sjoerd van de Goor, the hack is also an especially frustrating situation. The Computer Science student has to pass one more exam and then he can start his final project at his own company. “I want to start working at TouchPulse full time starting in February. If I fail this exam for the Psychology & Technology elective Thinking and Deciding, I’ll have to wait an entire year because my graduation will coincide with a resit.” And it just so happens that this elective involves a lot of reading and learning through repetition. Van de Goor cannot access the course materials or practice exams. “It’s very frustrating. I won’t lose sleep over it, but I do have to study much more intensively and I already know it’s going to affect my performance.”