I am yet again awake at a ghastly hour. Earlier, from about 8 to 10-ish, I feel deeply asleep. I had one of those deep sleeps which takes ages for the body to reawaken, yet you wake up more tired than before. It was one of those deep sleeps where you remember and (especially) have really strange dreams which feel very real, but are very strange. So instead of sleeping at a proper time, I am now awake at 3:26am typing away.
I had earlier lay in bed and attempted to sleep. While I lay there I thought of many things, too many things in fact. I started to feel distressed and panicky. Chief of these was the fact that I felt that I had lied to one of my government tutors about why I was missing for class today. Honestly, I had not done the work. I had seen the readings, but had missed the lecture the week before, and as a result I all saw was a bunch of incomprehensible statistics and probability formulas. But at the same time the reason I gave was valid. I did, and have been, running on about 5-6 hours sleep every night from Tuesday onward. Thursday, my day to sleep in was ruined when Camden Council decided to be maddeningly efficient for once and cut the damn grass at 8am in the morning. I was already starting to feel the effects on my body and my psyche yesterday evening, but had I have really wanted to go to the class, I could have pushed myself. I feel guilty because although my reason was valid, I knew I could've done better had I wanted to.
Which brings me to yet another distressing thought: more essays and mock exams. It's not so much the act of preparing and doing it that worries me (surprising, even to me), I realised, but the fact that I have seemed to be consistently under-performing. Today, while having drinks with the usual people at 5pm on Fridays, they spoke briefly about essays. One said the lowest he'd ever gotten was 59. The other said he was used to scoring high 60s on his essays. I did not participate in that particular conversation but instead smiled, nodded, and laughed as appropriate. Just the thought that I have been getting nothing but 58/59 for all my essays this year was enough to diminish any joy I had within me for that moment. Worse still, it was not something I felt I could allow myself to admit to other people. It makes me feel like a failure.
Last time, something like that would not have affected me to this extent. I am used to under-performing. The report books of my past are littered with comments like "is a bright girl... I don't understand why she gets the grades she does". Unfortunately this seems to be a 14 year rut I seem to be unable to get out of. No matter how much I try, seeing teachers, seeing writers-in-residence, I never seem to be able to break the barrier. I have no idea what to do. And the fact that I don't know what to do, the fact that it scares me so much, makes me go into denial and attempt to push the thoughts out of my mind. This means however that whenever I am reminded, my mood takes in instant leap into a void. I had hoped things would've been different in University (although it could be a British style education that doesn't agree with me in general), but its really the same as when I did the IB/O Levels/PSLE.
I had originally hoped to post about the very tasty Vietnamese food I've been having of late in the Clerkenwell area with Christoph, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.
*Instead of drinking a pint today with the guys at 5pm, I drank a can of coke because alcohol would've put me to sleep instantly.
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