I would argue that the middle of the semester is the most stressful part. Yea, dead week and finals are both awful, but exams are all that you have to worry about during those weeks. In the middle of the semester everything starts taking off, and suddenly you find yourself drowning in a sea of commitments and homework assignments. Here are some gifs that explain how I feel about the middle of the semester.

All of your homework starts piling up

Everything is due at once. You're cramming in the things you procrastinated on with your weekly assignments and trying to get them all done in one long homework binge. Sometimes you can get it done with enough coffee, but other times your brain just kind of shuts off and accepts defeat.

You've eaten pretty much all of the snacks you brought at the start of the semester

You're down to like one pack of ramen and all the random stuff you got in the care packages, so basically you're living on cafeteria food and that just doesn't cut it sometimes.

All of the organizations you're in decide to meet on the same day

It definitely seemed like you'd have enough time for all of these groups at the beginning of the semester but then you have a day where you go from 7am to 10pm with maybe 4 hours of free time (NOT consecutive) and you realize you were wrong.

The weather can't make up its mind

This isn't specific to fall or spring semester either. Once you get to the middle of the semester, it's sweater weather in the morning and regret weather in the afternoon. You're either freezing or frying, there's no in between.

You realize just how many of your dining dollars you've spent, and that you're going to have to start cutting back

You gotta make it last the rest of the semester, so you're going to have to cut out one of your weekly Starbucks trips and settle for the stuff you have in your room.

Scheduling starts, which means you're freaking out about what classes to take

But it's ok, freaking out about next semester's classes will keep you from freaking out about this semester's classes, right? Right??

Clubs are having actual meetings now so you can't just show up for free food anymore

Looks like you're either quitting or sticking it out to see if there's more food. If you go to a small enough school there's a good chance you went to the first meeting and ended up with an exec position, so you're pretty much stuck.

Midterms are in full swing

Time to learn how much you don't know from the rest of the semester and see if you can cram it into one week! Such fun!!