It's that time of year for thousands of Year 12 students nationwide - final exams.
D-Day for many is next Monday.
It's a chills-inducing, heart-rate-pumping experience for many - now and in decades past.
But some of those who survived to tell the tale are happily offering their advice in a new campaign.
Well known Australians such as Malcolm Turnbull, Rove McManus and Ita Buttrose exhort students to stay calm, stay healthy - and keep perspective.
Ita Buttrose tells students, it's all just a learning experience.
"I know for a lot of you that Year 12 is a very stressful time and some of you are worried that you might fail. It doesn't really matter if you do, because everything we do in life is a learning experience. It's not the end of the world. You can go again. You can always have another go."
This helping hand is an iniative of mental health service Reachout.com.
It's trying to help students like Phoebe Chester manage one of the most stressful periods in her life so far.
Ms Chester - who attends Monte Sant' Angelo girls school in Sydney - says she has hopes of making law school at university.
"I'm not picky as to where I get in because it's such a competitive field to enter into. It's got one of the highest in the state and the leaving rate, and the amount of jobs available also make it a really competitive field, so there's definitely extra pressure added there because it is a rank you get, you are out to beat a lot of the state. That is the goal."
So a word of advice from federal Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull.
"There's no point being anything other than chilled when you do the exam."
And key to staying chilled, says Phoebe Chester, is knowing that the high school final exam period isn't all about study.
She acknowedges the Reachout.com campaigns helps get that message across, but only to a point.
"I think to an extent you do need to be constantly reminded that there is life after the HSC. You're so 'in the zone'. You eat, sleep and study. There is an element where it is useful, but I think overall there is a huge disconnect between this generation that's preaching to us about how it's going to be fine and look how great they are. You can't but feel like the environment is so different these days. We've got so many more distractions than they did and increased pressures. I think definitely the expectations and the standards and the things you need just to qualify for the same things that they got into are a lot more difficult."
Sydney student Ben Clouston of St Ignatius boys school also feels high school students today face greater pressures to those faced in the past.
But he says his generation also has some important benefits.
"If you were doing the HSC a decade or so ago, if you wanted to find something out, you'd have to scroll through all your text books and literally, systematically find everything. Whereas now you can just look something up on Google or go onto a student support website where there's notes from other people you can reference and such. So I think there are challenges in this day and age, but there are also things that are actually quite beneficial."
The generation gap isn't lost on those speaking in the Reachout-dot-com campaign - not least Labor Senator Penny Wong who finished Year 12 in 1985.
"Bob Hawke was Prime Minister, Live Aid was on and the Breakfast Club was released."
But, she says, there's one simple message that transcends the age gap.
"And certainly there wasn't any plan in Year 12 that I was going to try and become a politician. There's life after Year 12 exams."
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