Pre-traumatic exam stress

They say ignorance is bliss, and as I delude myself by immersing deeper and deeper into the land of celluloid, I find myself relishing the 90 minutes where I am in someone else’s world, as an observer. A situation where I don’t have to think about my own reality, where my mind can flow freely into another realm- a place of pretty colors, attractive people and a life accompanied by soundtrack- undisturbed by the jarring reality of the exam period and a major project. Just until this movie ends, I tell myself, and then I’ll start on the work I’ve neglected thus far but silently wish for the movie to last just that little bit longer.

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It’s 2.30 a.m. and as the exam period draws suffocatingly closer, I find myself retracting deeper into fantasy in an absurdly vain attempt to ignore the inevitable and the constant that is reality. The reality of exams, of responsibility, of fear in the realization that I no longer have a grip on things, I’ve somehow lost my way and am overwhelmed by what is expected of me. What is it that I am supposed to be doing? Why am I not happy? I hold this probably misguided perception that artists are a lot happier than scientists, when its right brained versus left brained, the right brainers look like they have more fun, where as left brained people, by this I specifically mean engineers, look a lot more tense, stressed and unhappy. Or maybe I’m confusing myself with the general left-brained public. Maybe I’m the one that’s always tense and stressed, afraid that one day someone will expose me as a fraud- that I really am stupid or worse, unremarkable. I find myself increasingly entertaining thoughts of ‘what if I had studied psychology?’ I look at friends who study the subject and I am jealous. But what if I had studied psychology instead? Would I have been any happier? Deep down I think the answer to that question would be a resounding N-O. Because for all my ranting, whining and complaining, I think I am just a scared little girl who’s afraid to grow up and smell the bitter, cold coffee. It’s ironic though, that this should happen now. I have always been the responsible one, done the responsible thing and now on the verge of life with a whole new kind of responsibility i.e. a career, I am panicking like a caged animal. And the funny thing is, I don’t graduate until 2009, but the future still plays on and on in my mind like a broken record. Shite, if only someone would just destroy the gramophone, or in light of technology, the ipod.

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I just tried a test that confirmed what I knew all along- I am 50% left brained and 50% right brained. Split down the middle, on the fence, jack of all trades but master of none… unremarkable. I am messy, but in my messiness there is an internal structure, I am analytical but I am also creative, I can be anal but I can also be laid-back, in specific situations I like routine but I also like to live each day as it comes. So what am I? How would society define me? If only I was an extreme, if only I could only be brilliant at one thing, if only I was blindly passionate about one thing, which is what you see a lot of in the movies, protagonists that are either one or the other, never both. Unless in some unrealistic storylines, multi-talented individuals who not only can do just about anything but are excellent at it as well, ala James Bond, or the Bond of my generation- Jason Bourne of The Bourne Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum.

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As I write I’m blatantly aware that I’m wasting what precious little time I have before the exam period and am deliberately stalling on having to do data evaluation on my 3rd year project. I resent people who don’t have any papers to sit for, and right now I am not sorry for how I feel.

Am I guilty for enjoying myself as I write this?

It is now 3.45 a.m.

Sigh, I need God.