.....is much easier said than done.
I either despair and surrender a little bit too easily, or I simply have way too much on my plate for a single person to handle. One or the other just has to be true because this can't be normal everyday life stuff. Maybe it's a little bit of both.
Academic-wise this semester I've been doing "okay," not great and not too bad...until 3 weeks ago. 3 weeks I totally bombed an exam...and I mean did like really bad. It didn't feel good to perform so horribly. This isn't undergrad...it's doctor school and they fail people out. It's a race just to keep up sometimes.
So instead of moping around or having a panic attack I decided to do what any type A -minded person would do: Identify the problem and do something about it! The bad number was enough to motivate me to want to work extra hard and make 90-somethings on the next exams (I have exams every single week). So I pretty much studied my ass off for the next test. I spent ten hours on a saturday studying...10 whole hours! I'm talking minus the breaks too. I spent even more than that on Sunday studying and woke up before the crack of dawn on Monday to do a final review. At that point I had pretty much studied more for that exam than any other test this semester. I felt on top of the world and so ready to go out and conquer.
The outcome? it was HARD! but I was relieved when everyone else thought it was hard too. However, when the grades were posted I couldn't believe that despite all of that hard work I boasted about, my test grade was still below the class' average. I mean I didn't do bad on it I still got a B, but it was 3 percent points below the class' average and I'm pretty confident I studied more for that test than the average person in the class.
Again I decided that I won't freak out, I'll identify where I went wrong and I'll do something about it! The next exam we had was rumored to be the hardest exam we will have to take all semester and I was determined to prove myself. I joined a hard core study group for it and actually started preparing for it like 2 weeks before the exam. ALOT of hours went into preparing for that exam. I just took it this past Friday and no joke it was pretty brutal however I felt good about it. I identified the tricks, eliminated the distractors, knew all the formulas I needed to know, and beat it....or so I thought!
I spent the morning after smiling until the answer key was posted during lunchtime . My content was quickly replaced with panic as I was comparing my answer sheet to the posted key and putting a red X where I missed a question. My hands started shaking and I couldn't even bring myself to count how many I got wrong and calculate my grade. I handed it over to my friend to do who then announced to me my grade in a sympathetic tone. To say that I was devastated wouldn't be an overstatement.
I wouldn't be so upset right now if I didn't work so hard. My confidence in my abilities is questionable, my sense of self-control and discipline shaken, and the fear and anxiety has set in. I'm trying to be positive and remember to just put my faith in God, but I feel like I've been knocked off my horse too many times too close in proximity that I really just need a little bit of time to get back up. Unfortunately life doesn't always give you that option.
So in the meantime I've been faking being ok hoping that at some point while following the same routine the calmnesss will come back and settle in on its own...and it's actually starting to. Today I've been feeling better than yesterday and even had some spurts of energy and motivation here and there. I've taken it upon myself to do some major organizing of my notes and desk and it really helped declutter my mind. I know that if I do well on this week's test I'll feel awesome. There is a brightside. The worst is over and I still have a passing average in that class. Plus, the Saints did actually win the Super Bowl!
So I think I'm starting to climb back up on that horse again.
