Thanks!

I’m glad I sound so together.  In real life, much of the time I feel like someone bailing out a boat that keeps springing leaks. 

You know that dream, where you meet your supervisor and she tells you that you need a math class in order to graduate?  And that you should have known that because it was on your schedule?  And the class has been in session for ten weeks and the final is today? And you don’t know where the class is or ever met the teacher, but you have to go sit for the test?

Yeah, it’s kind of like that every day, only I’ve been to every single class.  I’ve taken notes and paid attention in every single class.  I’ve done the work and (until recently when it just got totally overwhelming) I did careful reading before every class and reviewed after every class.  And when I sit for the tests, I swear to god it’s that exact same sinking dream feeling of having never been here before.

I am working at maximum capacity and one of my coping mechanisms is daily breakdown.  I have one crying, hysterical breakdown per day, minimum.  If I even tried to describe to you what the classloads are like, I don’t think I could.  I have 300+ flash cards for the midterm on Monday.  It took TT and I three hours to go through them all tonight, which, I think, totally belittles the term “flash card”.  We had three of those lectures within a week and I took detailed notes and have a great teacher and still there is a maximum capacity the brain can hold.  Particularly a 33 year old brain.

By the time the test comes around I will have been studying, hard, for four solid days, including the aforemention attending of every class and note-taking and book reading and lecture reviewing, and I swear to God I will walk into that test feeling like I just crammed last night for two hours after an Apartment 3 party.

I do not understand how I can work this hard and be praying, PRAYING, to fall somewhere in the middle of the pack.  I enter every situation with my heart in my throat, convinced that today is the day I flunk out.  And the crazy ass thing is, with the level I’m at and with the kind of brains that surround me, it is (for the first time in my life) not a generalized fear of failure, but a very, very real risk.  Tomorrow could be the day that I cannot hold it together.  The next test could be the one where I get the F and am asked to leave.

Remember that bint whining about her online Astronomy course?  God, do I want to smack the shit out of her.

I have never, ever done anything like this before and I’m glad I sound so together because I’m currently being held that way with spit and hope.