Friday
I had one of those moments during the exam yesterday. I sat down and realised my bladder may not last the two hours – quenching thirst can be counter-productive on occasion. Fortunately my bladder did not explode. Unfortunately, worse was to come. As soon as the exam started and I read the first question, my mind went blank – a total pure white. The question was one of those compare and contrast two differing concepts but I could not remember a single thing about one of the concepts. Anyway, after muddling through the first question by continuing to refer to only one of the concepts, I was more successful for the remainder of the paper.

On completion of the third of the required questions, I remembered my initial blanking and thought I’d read through the question again – no luck, my mind still drew a blank. At that point, I considered whether this was due to the pressures of the exam or whether I had really failed to revise that topic.

Oh well… two left

Exams

Having revised solidly for the last few days for the exam tomorrow, I can safely say that nothing that anybody can say will make me feel any more better – in fact it will most likely add to the stress.

I know there is not much point arguing about the benefits of examinations at this stage, nor discuss knowledge v.s. understanding but suffice to say I’d rather get this over with…even if the project-work that awaits is just as, if not more, stressful and depressing.

O Brother
My older brother has been in town since Saturday. I’ve barely seen or spoken to him not least because of all the cramming I’ve been doing but also as he’s been pretty much asleep or out 99% of the time. There are a few things that need to be discussed with him, most importantly the living arrangements from August and all that. I guess it will have to wait. He’s off tomorrow though.

Hate
I’ve been handling the exam stress pretty well up until now. I’ve had my doubts pretty much before every exam so far but I’ve got through them knowing that I haven’t failed. I also hoped that with the first week behind me it’d be less painful; I hope that will be more true tomorrow afternoon.

Anyway, stress manifests itself mostly as anger and hate in me. I seem to direct it at various things in my life ranging from people, objects, ideas and brands. I suppose there must be subconscious, or possibly conscious, reasons behind this but I’m not going to mention any of them.

This blog entry has not been as stress relieving as I had hoped. I suppose it didn’t turn out to be the full off rant I had planned.

I keep telling myself that it’s just 3 weeks. I keep trying to persuade myself to hold out. I keep losing focus. Three weeks should be an incredibly short time – actually, 3 days is what I should be focusing on. There aren’t even 3 days before the first exam and I can’t seem to find that spark inside of me. I talked previously about hitting that figurative brick wall; I seem to be waiting for someone or something to break it down for me rather than attempt to scale it. I’ve been on and off for the past few weeks, sometimes discovering that drive to learn and then just as quickly being convinced that there is no point.

The next 3 weeks will be the culmination of the last 20 years of my life. Admittedly the education I received in pre-kindergarten at the age of 3 has no bearing on how well I do in the next three weeks but the fact remains, my full-time education draws to a close soon.

It’s been a rough few days since my last post. I had grand plans to ramp up my revision ready for the hellish times ahead but things never seem to go as planned. I also planned to hit the pool a few times a week whilst I was back home but that didn’t really happen either. Oh well.

Another Brick

So, the week has been filled with drama of one kind or another. Firstly, I walked into that brick wall I’d been fearing for the past few months. I’d “run out of steam”, “hit the wall”, “burnt out”, however you name it, my greatest fear seemed like it was going to be realised. It did take me out for a few days with a high fever, dizziness and the usual symptoms of being ill…. but I think it’ll pass within the next day or so. Unfortunately it did take out those few days, which has meant today has been a bit of a nightmare in terms of figuring out how much work I have yet to do. I wish I could believe that everyone else is in the same position, but let’s not kid ourselves, some of you don’t have a thing to worry about and then there are some who don’t care, possibly?

Having switched to the Calendar view in Thunderbird for the first time this week, I realised that the multi-week view now menacingly shows the final week of April. You all know what that means? There’s less than 3 weeks left – the first exam is looming.

I know I said I did not like to talk about this stuff at all but my life is, and will be for the next month, consumed by it so I don’t really have much else to talk about. Also, I have been known to be slightly hypercritical! Skip to after the break if you want to read about other stuff ^^

Student Life

So, I originally intended to only have two phases in my revision. The first phase being just a quick glance through everything to refresh my memory as to what I needed to learn, and the second phase being to actually learn it. Phase two has ended up becoming the “refresh”as the first phase contained a lot of stuff I hadn’t seen before!

I was thinking of doing a revision blog post a day on a random topic that I’d looked at during the day. I have no idea what I’d write about but maybe it’ll be a nice way to recap what I “learnt”. Actually, it probably won’t be helpful at all…

Anyway, so, despite the extensive hours I’ve put in so far I have actually yet to learn anything at all. Well, apart from what every student learns at this stage – there’s a Himalayan mountain range of stuff to learn and I’ve only worn a t-shirt.