Over the weekend, the familiar noise of Jahangirnagar University began to thin out. The iconic red bus lined up at the transport pool packed with students, leaving the campus. The university was officially heading into its Durga Puja vacation, except for one corner of the campus.

At the Institute of Business Administration (IBA-JU), the lights stayed on, and the study notes remained spread across desks. As one of the faculty members once quoted, “IBA JU is a pressure cooker.”

A pressure cooker making students ready for the harsh corporate world, where the longest leave they can get is only three days. Similarly, IBA-JU chose to follow the corporate calendar instead of the university calendar.

On Sunday, 18 October 2026, an officially declared holiday for JU, the students of IBA-JU were busy with their semester final examinations on an abandoned university campus.

On that day, even the university buses were not running, creating extra hassle for the students. This shows how the university administration completely forgot about one of its own.

Staying behind while the rest of the campus goes dark presents its own set of logistical problems. Dining halls scale back operations, residential halls thin out to skeleton crews, and campus transport disappears.

“If they can take exams on Ashtami, why don’t they take the exams on Dashami as well?” said Jith, an undergraduate student at IBA-JU, expressing his disappointment at the exam schedule. For students, the challenge extends beyond just academic preparation.

“I will return home between exams, travelling 300 km, no matter what! I will spend the vacation that was meant to be mine,” said Arosh.

The students returned home after finishing their exam on Thursday, just to return to campus tired and overwhelmed for the semester final on Saturday.

There are no crowds near the Bottola, no strumming guitars near the Mukto Moncho, and no chatter drifting through the shadows of the Strawberry Garden. There is only the steady rhythm of pens inside Gallery 130, marking the final stretch of an uphill march.

With two crucial exams still looming on the schedule once the university reopens, can this break still be considered a vacation?