I’m currently playing around with photo editing apps. I really want to get around to publishing my Snowden and some Japan or even Thailand posts…by now they won’t be as text heavy or descriptive as I like my travel logs to be but they will still be something. I have some nice enough photos, but its fun to play around to make them better. I’m not a good photographer and I know no amount of filtering will make me into one, and yet I can’t help but enjoy playing around and thinking they do improve with it.

I’ve finished my exams and with that the autumn semester comes to a close and the spring semester rapidly approaches. I had one exam and a coursework due last week. I didn’t really get stuck into the coursework until about a week before the deadline so I was pretty stressed out. Oh I had tried to get the coursework done sooner but it was so hard, every time I sat down to go through it I would only end up getting more confused. I kept thinking that I just needed to revise some more and then it would click, but soon I found that even having gone through the notes, the example sheets, the past exams, I still had no clue. Stressed out and full of despair (yes, things had gotten that dramatic) I turned to my father for help, and he kindly sat with me for four hours each night practically every night that week so that Sunday, right before the deadline I had it done. My report wasn’t the best and I foolishly thought I could fluff it out on Monday morning before handing it in. Of course, I actually overslept and ended up rushing to uni and handing it in 10 minutes before the deadline without much polishing up. Then the exam was Tuesday and I was feeling more confident about that. The past exam papers had been fairly straight forward. Alas the paper I got was weird and I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. I felt angry and disappointed. I had worked so hard and for what? A terrible exam and a hasty coursework makes me nervous for this subject.

Of course, no time to rest. I had two exams this week and these were my weaker subjects. Seeing so my strong subject had gone to bits I was terrified. I ended up phoning my mom last Friday, Saturday and even Sunday because I needed so badly for someone to tell me it would be OK, that I could only do my best, that I just needed to try. You see, I’ve been struggling this semester. I’ve been slipping back into my old mentality of I’m just going to fail so why even try? This was especially true for these subjects. They were required business modules. And I wish I hadn’t been required to do them. I didn’t understand. The terminology was one thing, the main thing. And the exams were essay based and I hadn’t written essays in exams for a long time. Thankfully I found a book my dad had bought my sister a long time ago, and that had somehow fallen into my hands. How to pass exams every time. Most of it was patronising but the section on essays was invaluable. That and my fathers advice. Make key points. Use diagrams, tables and charts to help you remember. I tried my best to revise like that, even though it was so dull and frustrating I really struggled with it and I was always left with the feeling if hopelessness, that no matter what I did it wasn’t going in, it wasn’t enough.

So I had my exam on Tuesday which was half essays and half maths questions. It was a good paper but I stupidly forgot some key formulas. On Wednesday I had a pure essay exam- one and a half hours to write three essays. I put my calculator out in the exam anyway, just because it felt too weird to study without it close by. I followed the books advice and spent ten minutes whizzing through the questions jotting down a quick plan- all the key points I could remember before settling down and getting stuck into the questions. It was OK. The exam paper was good. I didn’t write enough for one question but I’d like to think the others were OK. Neither was as horrendous as I had been expecting, but neither were they good. I just hope I passed.

Its OK now. It feels great for them to be over. Today I lay in bed until well into the afternoon, warm and comfortable, enjoying not having the pressure to do anything or go anywhere. I wrapped myself in a bubble, not thinking of everything I still need to do for next semester and just letting myself relax.

I’m surprisingly calm. These pills must really be working because I have felt low, negative, worried (see:all those hours spent on the phone to my mom) but I’ve only had a proper panic attack one and a half times, and never in the exams. Unfortunately the flip side of the pills is that they affect my concentration and sleep, so in that way I’ve been tired and unfocused, but feeling calm helps me to stay relatively clear headed in the exams. To be able to tackle them without anxiety distracting me. Its good. I hope it shows on my marks. It would be too cruel that I felt like I coped on these exams in a way I never have before, just to….do badly. I won’t say fail.

Tomorrow its back to work. Got driving, and gotta get stuck into my thesis and job stuff too. I feel rather dazed, detached. I feel like I’m going to return to work tomorrow as if I’ve come back from another planet.

On Tuesday its back to lectures too. Everything continues to happen quickly. I am coping though. Just.