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.

Where Is My Mind ?

My head collapsed and there was nothing in it so I ask myself:

Where is my mind?

I know that it happens every time.
I know that as long as I have exams, it will keep on happening.
Still, it doesn't make it less scary.
At all.

See, I seem to suffer from stress induced post study amnesia.
One second, here I am, reciting -chanting even- what I just learned to Mr K.

I do my best parrot impersonation and make sure that I say word what is written on my sheet.

Sheet of paper after sheet of paper, I go through what I have to study for my upcoming exam and I get more pumped with each one that I recite correctly.

Then comes the night before my exam.

All of a sudden, I couldn't say what I studied for the life of me and I then proceed to impersonate a fish instead of a parrot.

Blub blub blub.

The -veeeery tiny- rational part of my brain knows that all my working has paid off and that it is actually stored somewhere in the back of my head but that rational part doesn't talk quite as loud as the other part.

That's when my fish impersonation turns into a headless chicken one.

Not a good look.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I will get out of that exam room and admit to Mr K. that yes, again, he was right and I remembered my shit.

Hell, so far I haven't gotten out of an exam in tears, wailing that I had indeed forgotten everything.

Still.

The mere thought of it happening, the mere vision of me giving black a blank copy will probably always ensure that I work myself into a frenzy the night before any exam.

Oh well.

As long as the only thing that I OD on to calm my nerves is pasta, I should be fine.

x, K.

Placebo * Where Is My Mind

(btw, I'm not an idiot.I know that the original song is from The Pixies which I also happen to love but the 13 year old inside me will always love any song sung by Brian Molko better )

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.