My midterms are in 1 week and 1.5 weeks. That's what has been going through my head every single day for the passed 4 days. I've had tough midterms before but never one I felt truly unprepared for. Up until a couple days ago I was soaring in Math, I'd finally got the system down pat and it was stuff I have already done in a previous class so I was doing fine. Monday was the first chapter I hit a wall, I hadn't done any of it before and I just wasn't understanding it. Over and over I got blocked, it was as if it was the first 2 weeks of school all over again. Mathematics is something I will always struggle to truly understand. I can burn the formulas into my brain if I do them 50 times but then a slight change is made, or something is added to it and thats when theres a block. Tonight I was working on the same chapter for 2.5 hours, till 10:30pm and I just felt a whirlwind of numbers and formulas spinning in my head and I was ready to lose it again. I thought math was going fine and now I have this to worry about too. I'm not sure if it's my entire day consisting of school, being in my house every single day, the time frame I have to get everything done, or just being flat-out drained that's put me in such a bad place just over 4 days. For the last 3 days I've coughed up blood again, it could be stress but I don't know. When mom caught my worst breakdown yesterday she said everything would be fine and she would help with the review. It lifted some weight off of my stress. I literally would not be able to complete the review by the due date on top of my weekly work without her help. I hope someday I'll be able to pay her back for the help she has done for me my entire life.
Every night I go to bed and try to push it out of my brain because that's what I do when I'm stressed, I obsess over everything I should have done differently that day and how it'll impact the next day. I stress, obsess, stress, like a constant sick cycle that consumes me.
Even though I know it does nothing, I can't help but keep thinking about how pointless yet required this all is and has been for 3 years. Till the day I die I will never understand the education system.
I once read a quote that stated how we spend half our time, energy and focus trying to understand what we are worst in, and can you imagine the possibilities that could have happened had that energy been purely put into what we do understand and are great in?
How little sense it makes to me that people will spend a large chunk of their education years (general requirements) working long and hard on subjects they are worst in, and will probably never use in their careers. And can you imagine the things they could accomplish if they could have put all that time into what they are great in.
I think about this all the time. What if I had been able to spend these last 3 years purely on art and my graphic design degree. What kind of things would I know right now? How much happier would I be? Nothing I can do about it, the system is what it is, you serve your time and then you can do what you will actually benefit from. Wow that sounded like a prison reference haha.
To those I love, I am sorry for the stress I've been in and that you've seen the meltdowns, I'm sorry that I have to ask for so much of your help but I love you and please keep your patience...
Consider this irony of my twisted human mind: A friend of David's went back to Alberta, Canada to undergo diagnosis and treatment for a serious medical condition. Another neighbor of ours reported that Rick wanted to come back here for a couple of weeks before his major surgery because the weather was so cold up there; the temperature was -40 degrees Celsius. Most people, including my husband, would probably have thought something like "Poor Rick!", or perhaps even, "That must be pretty cold."
ReplyDeleteNot me. My math education kicked in, and I grabbed the "T" volume of our 1963 World Book Encyclopedia to find the conversion formula for Celsius to Fahrenheit. Under "temperature", I found that F=9/5 C +32. Then I strained my brain trying to remember how to clear an equation. Addition and subtraction before multiplication and division right? That would mean that Celsius and Fahrenheit are about the same at that temperature. (I still think I will Google it with something like "At what temperature does the Celsius scale cross the Fahrenheit one?")
Anyway, I also used the dictionary to look up the spelling of Celsius, and Microsoft Word's spell check to find Fahrenheit while writing this comment on your blog.
--All of that time and trouble to find out that the temperatures probably read the same when it is that cold.
My point is this: A good education combined with an ageing, but still curious mind can cause me to waste a lot of time that might be better spent in showing concern for real people in my life. Too much education can be a distraction. Sometimes a quest like this causes me to loose my balance.
Enjoy your art, Jade. Use your creativity to find a way over, under, or around life's roadblocks. Or follow the example of Little Red Riding Hood, and pick some flowers on the way to your destination.
The pain and stress in your post is just a reflection of the high investment you have in your classes--nothing more.
After the next week or so this will all be behind you. Enjoy life's journey.
We love you,
Lynda and David