Growing up, part 1
I have had a lot on my mind lately. Usually, my brain is going on and on, analyzing this and that, with bits of “You’re such a failure” thrown in just for fun. Those thoughts are mainly based in the external. I think a lot about other people and other people’s lives.
My thoughts lately have been self-centred. Who am I? Who did I used to be, and what have I become? These are probably normal thoughts to have a month or so before graduation, especially for people who don’t know what they are going to do with their lives. I was never really supposed to be one of those people. I’ve always had a plan.
I still have a plan, technically, but it’s contingency plan. We never plan for contingency plans to be put into action, but there it is. While I was always a stickler for following “the plan” exactly as it was laid out, the majority of students in post-secondary education end up wavering from what they originally planned to do. You know. Mostly because they find out that they don’t really like accounting, or because blood makes them queasy, so medical school is a no-no, or that studying French literature really does not open that many career doors. So, I am well aware that I am not alone in that my plan didn’t go exactly according to plan.
But my contingency plan is not fool-proof. Nothing is fool-proof. Will I get a job in the mental health field after graduation with a degree that does not allow me to be registered? If I do get a job, will I eventually apply to graduate school, or will I lose momentum? If I do get a job, will it be enough to supplement my slightly above-average-but-still-below-the-cutoff-for-grad-school GPA? Should I even go to graduate school? Perhaps I should be a writer and live on the street in a box.
I am afraid of graduating. I’m also afraid of not graduating. I have outgrown my undergraduate degree. I bypassed minors and options in order to take every single psychology course available to me, and now, I have nothing left. I have to graduate.
But graduating means leaving behind the comfort of not truly having to deal with the “real world” yet. I have to get a job. I have to wake up early every day and go to work. I have to deal with coworkers and bosses and I (ideally) have to counsel people when I can barely counsel myself. Okay, I like the counselling part, but everything else sounds TERRIFYING.
And even worse, I have a horrible feeling that graduating university means that I will be a grown up. I don’t feel like a grown up, and really, people don’t truly expect me to be a grown up yet. If I mess up – oh well! I’m just a kid. But I think that once I have graduated, people will suddenly expect more from me. I’ll have to stop using “like”, and stop wearing hoodies and sneakers, and I’ll have to start showing up when I am expected to be somewhere. Ridiculous, the notion.
I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. To be continued.
Uninspired
You guys. My brain is empty. School is running me ragged. Yesterday, I had some free time and decided that I would finally start working on that novel, but, you guys, my brain is empty! I have no creativity and no ideas and I am the worst writer in the history of the universe. I thought about blogging, and perhaps writing up that post I wrote about Twilight the Movie as a follow-up to my review of the book, and, you know, I was all eager to do that, because while watching the movie, I took notes. When I went back to look at those notes, I found a list of comments, of which this is a small sample:
So basically my notes sucked, and also ended after I got tired of typing “LOL” repeatedly.
Anyway, my point is that I am fresh out of ideas and therefore I am a failure as a new almost-novelist. I need INSPIRATION and everything is failing to inspire me. I had a tiny moment of inspiration today when I had the following conversation with the guy making my sandwich at Subway:
Me: Green peppers and black olives.
Guy: Haha! I thought you said black pepper!
Me: ?
Guy: Do you play Farmville?
Me: No.
Guy: Oh.
Me: I’m sorry.
Guy: I’m looking for Farmville friends.
Me: (long pause) Oh.
Guy: (long pause) Haha! Gotcha!
Me: Haha!
Guy: Okay, then.
Me: ?
When I left the store, I thought I could write a story about an excessively eccentric guy who likes to play Farmville when not working at Subway. However, there needs to be a TWIST, or else that’s just boring. Maybe he has a night job as a drag queen or something. I AM SO OUT OF IDEAS! Maybe I should start experimenting with heavy drugs the way all writers inevitably do.
When it doesn’t rain, it snows
Hey y’all. I totally fell off the blogging wagon. Well, sort of. Every time I wanted to write something, I decided it would be too awkward to talk about the silliness of my life while other people’s lives are being shattered by earthquakes. So I just kept my mouth shut for once, as per one of my goals for 2010. I suppose I could have written one of those entries that says ~*PLEASE DONATE!*~, but, I mean, shouldn’t we be donating all the time? People are always in need, even in the absence of earthquakes.
The word “frantic” most accurately describes this school term thus far. It’s my last term, and, work-wise, probably my most difficult. My constant anxiety makes everything more difficult. I have to continuously remind myself about how much worse I was two years ago, one year ago, even a few months ago. I mean, I’m glad that I am no longer having severe panic attacks that loop in and out of each other for hours on end. Instead, I feel this constant brimming of anxiety, as if I am a simmering pot, and at any moment, I could just boil over. The stamina it takes to continuously watch myself, to make sure I don’t boil over, is a feat of strength. The simmering itself is like running a marathon.
All of this leads to just one word resonating in my head, over and over: tired. Tired. Tired. Tired. Tired.
In better news, I have no statistics classes this term. And I keep seeing hot guys everywhere. I don’t know where they came from but I suspect they are probably either high schoolers or the new freshman class. I feel really awkward about leering at them. In even better news, I am almost finished a quarter of my last term in school! I’m kind of scared that the relief I feel when I graduate will be so great that I will decide to not apply to graduate school. And then I will live in a box with the rest of the psychology majors.
This blog post is so pointless. Mostly because I just drank so much hot chocolate that I may actually throw up. It totally didn’t have the same effect as coffee as I thought it might. Good morrow, fairies of the night.
Holden
At the grocery store I most frequently frequent, there is a cashier whose register I actively avoid. Why? Because sometimes, when boys are very good-looking, or not very good-looking but I like them for other reasons, the shy girl in me comes out and I can’t look them directly in the eye. I eventually am able to make eye contact, of course, but it takes a lot of practice and deep breaths to control the butterflies.
This boy is not outstandingly good-looking or anything, and I don’t even know his name, let alone his personality. He’s cute, but an average sort of cute. But here’s the thing: I have a tiny crush on him. At first, I couldn’t figure out why I was unable to make eye contact with him. Why did I have a tiny crush on this random guy who isn’t that good-looking and whose personality I don’t know?
Then, one day, all the other registers had huge line-ups, and his was empty. Stubbornly, I stood in a long line, my shyness preventing me from going near this boy on whom I have a tiny crush despite the fact that his register was free and open, and I was only buying a box of crackers. He caught my eye from far away and smiled. It was a nice smile. I immediately looked away. Finding no way to get out of the situation, I made my way over to his register and avoided eye contact.
When I stood less than a foot away from him, it hit me. I realized suddenly that this boy resembles most closely the image I have in my mind of Holden Caulfield. When this thought popped into my head, I thought, what? I was incredulous at myself. But there it was, plain as day. When I read The Catcher in the Rye, I picture Holden Caulfield to look a certain way, and this guy looks like Holden Caulfield, and I, for some reason, have a crush on Holden Caulfield.
I am fully aware that Holden Caulfield is a fictional character. I do not need to explain the very real feelings I sometimes have for fictional characters.
And what the heck, me? Holden Caulfield is insane. Literally. Why do I have a crush on him? I think it’s because he’s funny and has this odd charming way to him, and he writes in an interesting manner.1 He’s strange. I like strange guys. Every guy I have ever liked has been very strange, and, really, is there anyone stranger than Holden Caulfield?
As soon as I realized that before me stood a real life Holden Caulfield – or his doppelgänger, at least – I looked away from him. He was baffled by my probably cold demeanour, but if I had seen his nametag – which would surely tell me that his name was Kevin or Jack or John or Brian – it would have ruined him for me.
I can never go to his register again.
- I know that the writing is done by J.D. Salinger. Please. I’m crazy, not stupid. Since the book is written in first person, the writing is the character’s. Done deal. [↩]
I am a vampire, I am a vampire, I am a vampire, I have lost my fangs: “Twilight” Book Review
One month ago, I made the strange and awkward decision to read Twilight. I spoke of this decision to my friends and some random strangers, and I got mixed reactions. Some people laughed. Some said, “Well, of course, you still like *NSYNC, why wouldn’t you read Twilight?” Most people just stared at me with a confused look on their faces. “Why?” they’d finally ask, their minds completely void of any reason I could possibly have for reading Twilight. Why? Because I am a writer, friends. And writers have to read. And not only do they have to read, but they have to read both good and bad stuff. Bad stuff teaches us how to not be bad, you know? Plus, bad stuff is usually entertaining.
And boy, was this ever bad.
The book started off tamely enough, relatively speaking. “I’d never given much thought to how I would die”, etc. Even still, I immediately had to stop myself from hurling myself across the room just so that I could stop experiencing this book. I hate people who soliloquize before dying. Just shut up and die. When I die, I am going to say the best final five words ever to whoever is listening, and then shut up and die.
And then it began. Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington because she is super selfless and wants her mom to have a happy married life with her new husband. So she moves to this teeny town where everyone knows who she is, and she’s all, “My name is Bella, not Isabella, GEEZ!”1 Then, of course, she meets the vampires.
Now, about the vampires. Stephanie Meyer describes the family of vampires as “beautiful”. And that’s it, pretty much. Sure, there is some vague description of hair colour and the chiseled marble that is Edward’s body, but mostly, it’s just, “Oh, Edward was so beautiful. His face was so beautiful. His eyes were so beautiful. His skin was cold and beautiful. His family was beautiful.” I’m all for simplicity, but HOW ABOUT A MORE SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION? I just kept imagining a nondescript Abercrombie and Fitch model and was sorely disappointed when I watched the movie.
My main issue with the plot of this book is that Edward, who had a meltdown after smelling Bella and left school for a week, came back and was all smiley and happy, and introduced himself, and walked with her, and GOT PERSONAL. He got personal! He freaking pushed Mike away and carried Bella in his arms and saved her from dying via sliding truck, and all of that bullshit, and then he’s all, “We can’t be friends.” Bella is like WTF but because she is shy or whatever, she doesn’t approach him again. And then HE approaches HER! He continues to approach her and follow her around, and then he’s all, “We can’t be friends!! I’m dangerous!” Meanwhile, I’m sitting here, dumbfounded. Why is he following her? Why does he continue to chase after her if only to say, “Stay away from me!” Hello? A girl can’t take that many mixed signals, especially not a girl as dumb as Bella.
Ah, Bella. Good ol’ Bella. This girl is as dumb as a stick. First of all, I have no idea why she likes Edward, and I am pretty sure it’s because (1) he’s hot, and (2) he looked at her like she smelled bad for one week while the other boys fawned over her. Can you say “low self-concept, -identity, and -esteem”? (Probably not five times fast.) But then, after that first week, after Edward had calmed the heck down, he also followed her around. Of course, he followed her around saying that she should stay away from him, so maybe this is all some sort of teenage thing where you tell her one thing and she does the exact opposite. I’m pretty sure her IQ is 5.
And Edward. Why does Edward like Bella? Because she smells delicious? That’s a great basis for a romantic relationship, I tell ya. I’m going to start dating ICE CREAM.2
It’s just that nowhere in the book does Meyer detail any common interests that Edward and Bella have, unless you count the common interest Edward and Bella have in Edward. This relationship is built on a foundation of a new “vegetarian” craving “meat”, and so he goes around protecting the meat from death because she is the only kind of meat he likes. But he’s also not going to eat the meat. What the hell is the point of this relationship? I am so confused.
Besides the actual plot of the book, which can have me ranting for hours, the writing itself was okay. My main issue with the writing was that I would sometimes fall asleep in the middle of a chapter because Meyer would be going on for five thousand paragraphs about what Bella ate for breakfast, or which pants she put on in the morning, and why she chose those particular pants, or why she made a particular meal for dinner, or why she listened to a particular CD. These details contributed nothing to the plot and did nothing to progress the story. And when was this book written?3 Apparently, in her room, Bella has a computer so old that she has to wait 20 minutes for it to start and then use dial-up to get to the Internet. I get that Forks is a small town, really, but it’s in freaking Washington, not on Abydos. Get a freaking new computer!
Also, I know I already said that Bella is dumb, but why is she so dumb? The girl almost dies, and then she’s all, “But I don’t care! I love you!” Why? I just… I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. She is in a hospital with zero consciousness for days, and she finally wakes up and asks Edward to turn her into a vampire. Um? Where are your priorities? Don’t you care about insurance?
But I don’t want to end on a bad note. The writing itself had no blatant grammatical errors that made me want to slam my head into a wall, and I did stick it out for the entire book, and the final sentence did have me on the edge of my seat, and now I will read the next book, and the entire series. So, yes. The plot is ridiculous, but Meyer sold it. I am impressed. Good writers are able to sell anything, and Meyer was able to get 13-year-old weirdo girls to suspend disbelief long enough for the book to spend weeks and weeks on the #1 spot on the New York Times Best-Seller List. Wow. Every writer’s dream.
Oh my god, you guys. I just read that Meyer graduated with a degree in English from Brigham Young University. That explains so much, you have no idea.4
- Sidenote: I think it’s really weird when people named Isabella insist on being called Bella. Like, can you please stop staring at yourself in random reflective objects? [↩]
- My question here is that do I have to commit to a particular flavour of ice cream, or can I have all the flavours as my, um, itemfriend? Also, am I still heterosexual if I date ice cream? [↩]
- 2003-ish, apparently. [↩]
- BYU is a straight up Mormon school. Edward and Bella said “I love you” before they kissed for the first time. What is with that? How is that even possible? And how can they love each other so quickly? They don’t even know each other! Also, the line, “And so the lion falls in love with the lamb” really truly makes me want to stab myself. Especially when Bella responds with, “Stupid lamb,” and Edward says, “Dumb, masochistic lion,” or whatever. This is all paraphrased. What is with them, honestly? [↩]
Support
I’ve been feeling incredibly moody for the past couple of days. I’m not usually moody. The only time I have mood swings is maybe once a month. I’m usually just… even-tempered. Today, I am not even-tempered. Today, I feel totally weird and out-of-control. Today, I feel like I could snap at someone for using the wrong connotation in their words. I did that yesterday, and I was like, what? Was that me? Did I do that?
The new school term – my final term – starts on Monday. “I’m scared” would be an understatement. I try to put it in perspective – I mean, it’s nowhere near as scary as my first term at graduate school will be, and nowhere near as scary as, say, childbirth – but that isn’t doing much for me. I am shaking in my boots, y’all.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s my anxiety over school that is causing my moodiness. I feel like I could just slip into sadness if I let my guard down even a little – a rare feeling for me. I’m not sure why, but I haven’t really tried to dig deep and figure it out. For once, I want to avoid my feelings. I don’t have time to figure out why I could potentially be sad when I’m so busy feeling anxious, you know?
My roommate is never here, so I essentially live alone. And I like it. I like the independence, and the solitariness. Writing is the most solitary art form, and I enjoy it. This past couple of weeks-ish has been a whirlwind of friends and family, and I enjoyed it in the moment, but soon longed for the aloneness that fosters my creativity and aspirations. And now it’s here, temporarily. Tomorrow, my roommate will be back for her final term, too. I don’t mind. I like her. I still get to be alone in my own room if need be.
But today, I am alone, and I feel like I could just slip into sadness if I let my guard down even a little. I am unprepared for sadness because I am rarely full-on sad. Knock on wood. Alone, I am having trouble distracting myself from this sadness, which, let’s face it, is likely caused by hormones or anemia or something ridiculous like that. Not that I’m that anemic, or anything.
And that got me thinking about support systems. Support systems are incredibly important through all stages of life, especially when they consist of people who are going through the same/similar stuff. For me, well, I am not sure who to call when I am almost-sad, because almost-sadness is not a thing. So maybe I need a psychic or an empath like that creepy tattoo chick from Heroes to be my support system. That would be cool. But I’m kind of afraid of psychics. I’m afraid they’ll tell me something horrible, like, “You will die a fiery death!”, or “You will never get into grad school!” Just cannot deal with that sort of thing.
This blog post is more pointless than my upcoming blog post(s) about Twilight.
Ringing it in
I used to be a resolutions girl. I always made New Year’s resolutions, even when I was a tiny thing and didn’t have anything to resolve. I think the biggest resolution I made most often and repeatedly was to “be less shy”.
Resolutions generally suck. They have a weird connotation that says that if you don’t achieve these here resolutions, you are a failure. And resolutions are always really vague, so it’s easy to be a failure, depending on your mood and outlook. “Be financially smarter” is the vaguest resolution ever. Does it mean that I should save more money (and if so, how much), or that I should start studying theories and application of finance? NO IDEA. These are the kinds of resolutions I used to make.
So, for good ol’ scare-my-knee-socks-off 2010, I have decided to make solid, concrete goals, and listing them now is going to freak me out, but what’s a girl to do, you know?:
- Graduate university. I’m supposed to graduate university in 2010. I have counted my credits multiple times and that’s the conclusion I have reached each time. However, we all know that I am not the best counter, so I am very afraid that I will have missed a credit, and I won’t graduate. But I must graduate. I have outgrown my undergraduate education. I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!
- Work butt off to get a job in the mental health field post-graduation. I really don’t want to sell out and become an administrative assistant or an HR representative or a McDonald’s cashier or something ridiculous just because I “need money”. Yes, I know that money makes the world go round and we can’t live without it, but I really really need a mental health job or else I won’t get into grad school and then my life will be over.
- Find a way to secure my own grown-up apartment away from my parents’ house. I cannot move back home. No.
- Go to the gym 3-4 times a week even if it’s scary. This one’s going to be hard, but it’s probably the most necessary thing on this list.
- Finish the screenplay. And send it out. Or don’t send it out. I don’t really care. I just need to get ‘er done just for gettin’ ‘er done’s sake.
- Write a novel. I have already started one but I have only written approximately 2,000 words and I keep re-writing those 2,000 words because I can’t make up my mind about the point-of-view. Here’s to 48,000 more words.
- Stop saying “like”. I think I mostly, like, use “like” mockingly, but, like, it needs to stop.
- Stop talking so much. The opposite of my “be less shy” resolution. We have come full circle. I just think that there are times that I shouldn’t be speaking and I speak anyway because I have trained myself to speak a lot. It’s unnecessary and ridiculous. I would like to talk less and think more.
Notice that “blog more” is not on that list. Hah! You got punked. Just kidding. I already resolved to blog more a few weeks ago and I’ve been doing it already. Geez. I just have so much to write.
So, anyway, now that’s that out of the way, my first goal is freaking me out! School starts next week. Hyperventilates. Good luck to me and to all of you who have to deal with me. Seriously. You’re all getting boxes of chocolate “thank you”s. 
Insomnia paratus
Ladies and gentlemen, I have not slept over the last two nights.
Okay, it’s not that I haven’t slept at all. I slept for 2-3 hours out of the 16 total hours I should have slept. And it’s not the kind of insomnia that involves lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling for hours. No. I fall asleep. I enter stage one of sleep all well and good, and then I go to stage 2, and I just STAY THERE. I do not enter stage 3 or stage 4 at all, and then I go back to stage 1 and I wake up. And then I enter stage 1, go to stage 2, and then stage 1, and then wake up. Rinse and repeat. Then, as the night goes on, I start entering stage 1, going to stage 2, and hitting REM sleep with like the weirdest freaking dreams ever. Then I wake up during REM sleep and hang around stage 1 of sleep, frozen in my anxiety over not ever hitting a stage of deep sleep.
I do not function well on lack of deep sleep.
Today, I woke up and decided that there must be something wrong with my body to make my brain behave in such ridiculous ways. I am big on the mind-body connection. So I decided that instead of eating cereal as I have been over the last few lazy days, I would make juice. I grabbed all the vegetables and fruit that I could find in my kitchen and juiced them. Without a juicer. That’s right – I Macgyvered them. So I chugged that and then went to work out, which, by the way, is horrendously difficult to do while half-asleep. But I had to do it. If I had a client suffering from insomnia, I would provide them with the basic treatment plan: eat right, don’t drink alcohol or coffee, exercise, don’t nap, and practice good sleep hygiene. And that is what I shall do.
So everything is going according to plan, and post-juice and post-workout, I’m starting to feel a bit better. I showered, did laundry, and haven’t fallen asleep on my computer yet. But lack of sleep has more implications than just making driving a little more dangerous, friends – it also makes my anxiety rear its ugly head; that is, the same anxiety that I have to work with every fibre of my being to suppress all the freaking time. When every fibre of my being is too tired to move let alone suppress incredibly powerful psychological phenomena, Anxiety comes out in a purple fleece jumpsuit and says quietly, “Hey! I’m here! Notice me! I don’t have to yell because my outfit is loud enough.”
And I noticed it, alright. I saw Anxiety come out before my very eyes, when it looked at me straight and said, “You know, not going to stage 4 sleep is a common symptom of sleep apnea. And sleep apnea causes heart attacks and strokes and all sorts of other things.”
Yeah. Anxiety went there.
I have no way of knowing whether or not I actually have sleep apnea because I haven’t yet been able to convince a man to sleep with me at night. It’s a hard knock life, so says Annie and so say I. So I have decided that I need to set up some sort of recording device and have it on and recording while I attempt to sleep tonight to see if I have suddenly started to snore. I know that I didn’t snore before, back when I was sleeping well, because while I was at home for the summer, my mother would like to look in on me while I slept to make sure I haven’t sleepwalked out the window. I am not sure why this is a concern because I have not sleepwalked since I was a child.
Now, if only I could secure a recording device.
TGIwhatever
Hello, dear townsfolk. What day is today? Today is Friday! This morning, I had to look at my calendar five and a half times to confirm that it is, indeed, Friday. I think having two exams on a Saturday and a paper due on a Sunday really messed with my sense of time. For the last four days, I have thought it was Thursday. I don’t know why I would keep waking up each day and thinking it was Thursday. It wasn’t like I was Groundhogging it or anything, but, like, I’d wake up, and be fully aware that it was a new day, and think, “Okay. Today is Thursday. Yesterday was not Thursday. Yesterday must have been Wednesday.” I did that for four days. You know, I really don’t know how I dress myself in the morning.
So, anyway, today, after I quadruple-checked that it is Friday, I decided I would continue my long-standing tradition of completing the questions posted on Friday5.org. Of course, by “long-standing tradition”, I mean I think I did it once when I was 13 and writing a blog that my crush used to read all the time and yet didn’t know that the guy I was talking about in it was him. He was a smart aleck, that one. So I warmed up my typing fingers and was all ready to complete my “Friday 5″, when I realized that the questions for today were really too stupid for me to bother answering. They are all about gift-wrapping. I have one and only one thought on gift-wrapping: PICK A LESS DANGEROUS SPORT.
Anyway. I suppose, in the spirit of Friday 5, I could just list five things that I would want to blog about but they have no real details attached to them so they look better in list form. Good idea, sir:
- I got a low mark on an essay in which I criticized the stupidity of Romeo and Juliet. I’m talkin’ mid-70’s. Yowza. I think I am being discriminated against by the Shakespeare-lovin’ English department. That, or my paper was half the length it was supposed to be. I’m going with the former.
- I now am taking two directed studies courses next term. I am a little worried that, many months from now, they will find my body buried under a mountain of journal articles. This is a constant fear of mine, actually. And who will feed the rabbit? I really need to put some emergency measures into place and write up a will and give someone the power to my attorney, if you know what I’m sayin’. You say I’m too young for that, I say I LIKE TO BE PREPARED.
- This week, I had a panic attack that lasted only 12 minutes! Yay! I convinced myself that I wasn’t dying by saying, “Hey! Remember when House had an infarction in his leg? He was screaming! Are you screaming? Are you saying you are stronger than House? You stub your toe and almost pass out. If you were having a heart attack, you’d be on the flo’ faster than Travolta on Saturday night.”
- During that panic attack that lasted only 12 minutes, I decided it would be a good idea to trim my bangs. It was not a good idea.
- I think “Merry Swiftmas” is kind of creepy. I mean, Evan Taubenfeld was cool when he lurked in the shadows, just waiting for Avril Lavigne to throw him a shred of attention, but this Taylor Swift thing is a little strange. She likes it, but it’s still weird.
This is the end of my writing chops warm-up. Please insert Disc 2.
PS. Speaking of Travolta and “What day is today?”, do you guys remember how, in Full House, Uncle Jesse was teaching his kids a song to sing to Becky for Mother’s Day? It was the dumbest song of all time. It went like, “What day is today? Today is Mother’s Day!” … and that’s it. However, apparently my brain loved this song so much, that every single time I ask myself, “What day is today?”, out loud or not, in front of people or not, I say, “Today is Mother’s Day!” in response. I have gotten SO many awkward stares for that. Why don’t they keep up with Full House?
Exams, stress, and my quest to make my teachers think I’m nuts
It’s snaining. Just thought you should know that Mother Nature has, yet again, decided to make driving even more fun for me.
On Friday, I had one exam, and then on Saturday, I had two exams. Being the bonafide psych major that I am, I deduced that I would stress myself out to the nth degree around three days before Friday, and then I would be at the highest level of stress on Friday and Saturday, and then I would crash. Going through a extremely stressful situation (if so perceived) causes the human body to put up all of its defences, and as soon as the stressful situation is over, all defences go down, and that is when the virus or bacteria (that has been sitting dormant in your system thus far) chooses to ATTACK.
I woke up today with a stuffed nose and stuffed ears and a hoarse throat, and my face also hurt. I was upset, but only slightly. The annoyance of being sick was offset by the fact that I had predicted this, so I was expecting it, and also because being able to predict the future is kind of awesome. Look, I even scheduled it in over a week ago:
I just noticed that Three Things on there are in the wrong calendar colour. HOW DID I MISS THAT. See? That is how distracted I’ve been.
So anyway, exams sucked. I spent three days studying nonstop for the Advanced Shakespeare class I decided to take despite the fact that I am not an English major, and memorizing all these quotes that I deemed significant from the plays that we studied. Of course, when I got to the exam, nothing I studied was on it. So, yeah, that was klassy.
Then I had the other two exams, which I did not study for because I was too busy studying for the Shakespeare class. I spent my Anthropology exam dissecting words to try and figure out what the terms meant, so that turned out to be more of an English/Linguistics exam than anything else, and the Criticism exam, well, let’s just say that at the end of the exam, I scribbled a quick note to my professor that said: “You know the movie/Broadway musical Funny Girl? Well, they did ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ on Glee the other day and it was stuck in my head the entire time I wrote this exam. Sorry. Loved the class!” Now she probably thinks I’m cracked.
Anyway, the stress is not over yet. In fact, life is about to get a whole lot more stressful. However, I did learn some valuable things over the last four months. For example, lesson number 1: do not ever take more than one English course if you are not an English major, unless you want to have suicidal thoughts. Oh, and lesson number 2: don’t study for anything, because no matter what you study, it won’t be on the exam.
There is a silver lining to all of this, though. Despite the fact that I was stressed out beyond belief about exams and the weather and how the City of Waterloo REFUSES to plough their roads, I did not have a panic attack, nor did I experience a single bout of real anxiety. I was sort of depersonalized a little bit during the Shakespeare exam, but come on. I was sitting there and staring at the exam, realizing that nothing I studied was on it. I think anyone would get a little depersonalized. But no anxiety! Yay!
Whoa. I just had a heart palpitation as I wrote that. Might be the triple espresso-pseudoephedrine cocktail I just shot down, though. Yeah. I’m good at being sick.