Post Traumatic Stress.

Two days ago I had a particularly stressful exam.

My teacher wrote each of the 500 pages of his book himself and, believe it or not, he actually wants us to quote them word for word at the exam.

- It's ok if you think that I'm shitting you, I would have never believed it if I hadn't been a victim of his particularly stupid and narcissistic way of interrogating students.

I had already passed two of his classes and I didn't see any reason why this year's one would be different.

Sure, it hurts a bit to try and cram 500 fucking pages of keywords in your head, but then so do a lot of other things that we do every day.

Actually, I was even pretty chill when it came to that exam.

Been there, done that, it would just take a lot of willpower and empty memory space.

Or so I thought.

For reasons unknown, those damned words didn't want to travel from their page to my head.

I gave up two days in a row until it was really a matter of sink or swim and I had to forceps them into my memory.

It's never pleasant.

The night before the exam, I was a hot mess.

For the life of me, I couldn't remember one word of what I had studied. -see previous post

It goes without saying that come bedtime, there were lots of tears and very little sleep.

On the morning of, my sweet Mr K. took precious time out of his own studying to help me go over every damned detail of it.

Picture me sitting on my bed, repeating my lesson with tears in my eyes like a child who didn't do his homework.

Not one of my finest moments.

When I arrived to the exam room, I could barely stop myself from fainting.

All my hard work was gonna be destroyed by one stupid exam which was supposed to be piece of cake.

It's a miracle that I didn't run after Mr K. and ask him to take me far, far way from uni.

Once I saw the questions, things seemed to look up a bit though.

Except from two questions (out of 10) where I went into full freestyle mode, I actually remembered my shit when it came down to answering.

Before giving back my exam, I painstakingly calculated that even if he was very strict in his notation, I should manage to pass.

Getting out, I talked with some friends who miraculously seemed to have answered roughly the same as me.

It seemed that once again, I had worked myself into hysteria for nothing.

Reassured, I left uni to get back to my ball and chain : my piles of study material.

From then on, things took a turn for the worse.

During the ten minutes that it took me to walk home, I went over and over all my answers again, dissecting them mercilessly in my head.

With every step, I became less sure that I had actually done good at the exam.

When I got home and started rereading my notes, every little key word that I had forgotten was one more nail into my coffin.

By the time I called my parents to tell them my impressions, I was sure that I had miserably failed.

I was so distraught that it took me a second to realize that my dad was mocking me when he wondered whether or not I'd actually have a negative grade.Ah ah.

Two days on and I'm not only certain that I failed that one, I'm also convinced that I'm gonna fail all the others which will then result in my failing Uni and failing my life.

I've actually gotta run : I have to see if any of the sleazy bars next to the train station are hiring.

God knows that I won't find work anywhere else.

x, K.

Hello.

My name is K., I'm 22 and I am a CoSTA.

Yeah, you read that right, I'm a Compulsive Stresser Anonymous.

I can still trace back precisely when I had my first stress.

I must have been all of 7 years all and I was a pretty confident kid until the "cool girl" in our class told us that the key to succeeding at a test was to think that you failed it.

I guess that the point that she was trying to make was that you'll always be pleasantly surprised with your results if you think that you bombed an exam.

To my naive, influenceable brain though, what she was saying is that seeing yourself as a failure was the key to success.

Sadly, I'm afraid that thought has never really left me even though, over the years, it has morphed into something else :

a deep belief that I'm bound to fail.

Take last year.

I got pretty good grades at all my exams, yet, if you had asked me after each one of them, I would have told you that I didn't know how good it had been but that hopefully I had managed to safe face.

Do not even get me started on my mental state before my exams.

I have been known to cry myself to sleep (figure of speech, I actually manage to sleep very little) and to pop medicine like it's candy to soothe my terrible cramps.

Can you say wreck ?

I stress before and after an exam, until I get my grades.

If my grades are too close from 12/20, I stress that I won't have my average.

Hell, I even stress when I'm not stressing because if I'm so chilled, it obviously means that I'm not preparing myself good enough and that I'm gonna fail.

Ugh.

This year though, I'm gonna have to change my years because all my usual patient listeners will be M.I.A.

My parents think that I'm a bit crazy after I had a particularly nasty meltdown in January, convinced that I was going to fail my year then of course, my life.

Mind you, I hadn't had any exams then and my closest ones were 6 months away.

N. has started Med school and will have slightly more important things to do come finals than to listen to me wail on the phone.

Still, the biggest change this year is gonna come from Mr K.

For the past 4 years, come exam session he becomes my caregiver / psychiatrist / cheerleader and all around mama bear.

Sadly those days have come to an end.

Mr K. is now also studying for a Master's degree and he will be in his very own pile of shit.

There will be no crying my eyes out come bedtime because Mr K. will need his rest, no endless complaining because he will need to study...At 22, I'm finally going to have to be a big, independent, responsible girl and this might be what stresses me the most about this exam session.

I can't say that I remember how I felt when I started to ride my bike without training wheels, but I'm pretty sure that I'm feeling the same right now.

x, K.

The Joy of Giving Up.

The calendar of a University student in Europe is a very weird one.
Every winter, you find yourself dreading Christmas because that means that your exams are right at the door.
You absentmindedly pick at the feast that your mom spent hours cooking as your mind is racing, not letting you forget that really, you should be studying.

Easter is another holiday that falls victim to exams.
While I haven't chased chocolate eggs in the garden for quite a while now (bummer), I used to always love spring break for the two peaceful weeks of (usually) clement weather that it offered.
Now ? not so much...
There are books to read, lessons to learn, exercises to do, ... and all the while you know that it's just prep work and that the real work hasn't started yet, that one whole month of studying and exams still awaits you.
It's kind of like getting a root canal but knowing that you'll have to come back soon to have your wisdom teeth taken out.
Joy.

The fact that me and Mr K. both are at uni certainly helps, I mean, who doesn't like knowing that they're not in it alone?
Those past days, we woke up and went on with our day with the painful precision of well trained robots : breakfast-study-lunch-study-dinner-sleep-start again.

But not today.
Today, we opened our eyes and saw a grey sky out the window.
Today, the little place between his shoulder and his neck where I like to hide when I sleep seemed that much more warm and comfortable.
Today, we said screw it, and as I was drinking a cup of fresh orange juice nestled in my pillows, I realized that working hard might make you feel good about yourself, but boy, does giving up every once in a while feel heavenly...

x, K.

Mr K., happily giving up on the world last summer.