Through out this semester I have tried to motivate myself to study by writing positive encouraging things to myself and repeating them in my head. So I thought I'd include one of these as a blog.
Lauren. It's not too late. All is not lost. You have absolutely nothing to lose. You may as well try and get something in. Just one sentence at time. Take it paragraph by paragraph. You can do it. You can do this. You're not stupid your brain is just slow this semester because you short circuited it with that massive panic attack. You are capable of critical thought. You can do this. It will be OK. It's not too late. All is not lost. Give it a go. Just start from the first sentence and take it one tiny baby step at a time.
I would continue saying these things to myself until I felt a bit better about approaching the work. Sometimes it worked to make me study, other times not so much.
Wednesday, 16 November 2016
Tuesday, 8 November 2016
and finally a glimmer of hope
6:04am Still no work done, but I have a plan to finish a French essay by midday, temporarily putting aside the two editing assignments. My plan involves printing out the story, reading it at a cafe of sorts and making notes and constructing an essay plan then reading through the lecture notes, including those ideas in my plan and then writing out my essay at first in english and then in French.
After writing this plan down I've decided to instead go home and do my readings in bed with home made coffee. As soon as its appropriate I will message my mother and ask of her assistance tonight so that we can do my editing assignments together. Ok Plan! it only took me 6 or 7 hours, but I am finally motivated. One step at a time, One sentence (to be read or written) at a time. This is an achievable task that I will throw together and then I have passed one of my four subjects.
Bolero is currently playing in my headphones and I couldn't think of a better soundtrack to the slow but steady montage of study I am picturing over the next few hours. I can smash it out. It will be fine. Everything will be fine. It is not too late. All is not lost. Coffee, popcorn, reading in bed, potentially a pastry or two. all is well.
After writing this plan down I've decided to instead go home and do my readings in bed with home made coffee. As soon as its appropriate I will message my mother and ask of her assistance tonight so that we can do my editing assignments together. Ok Plan! it only took me 6 or 7 hours, but I am finally motivated. One step at a time, One sentence (to be read or written) at a time. This is an achievable task that I will throw together and then I have passed one of my four subjects.
Bolero is currently playing in my headphones and I couldn't think of a better soundtrack to the slow but steady montage of study I am picturing over the next few hours. I can smash it out. It will be fine. Everything will be fine. It is not too late. All is not lost. Coffee, popcorn, reading in bed, potentially a pastry or two. all is well.
I think because I'm so used to this part of the semester being such a highly anxious one I've started to rely on those feelings of anxiety to motivate me into doing stuff. Who cares if I hit myself, and smash my arms on the hard tiled floor until they swell massively - I get work done once the crying stops.
But now I just feel so calm (Potentially my body has finally realised that to protect itself from harm it must not allow stress in, not to mention how sick i've been because of stress this term)
So now I have to figure out how normal people do this study thing. How they just sit down and do an assignment because its due and don't have a bunch of mental problems to flourish in spite of.
But now I just feel so calm (Potentially my body has finally realised that to protect itself from harm it must not allow stress in, not to mention how sick i've been because of stress this term)
So now I have to figure out how normal people do this study thing. How they just sit down and do an assignment because its due and don't have a bunch of mental problems to flourish in spite of.
Snap out of it!
3.32am
Lauren! What the fuck are you doing? There is no excuse, your head is clear, you are not sick or cripplingly depressed right now - all of the previous obstacles are not currently an issue. You are going to fail. Snap the fuck out of whatever is going on and get some fucking work done. The pressure is building
Lauren! What the fuck are you doing? There is no excuse, your head is clear, you are not sick or cripplingly depressed right now - all of the previous obstacles are not currently an issue. You are going to fail. Snap the fuck out of whatever is going on and get some fucking work done. The pressure is building
last ditch effort to motivate myself
It is now 2:57. Still no work but decided to look up music I like to make myself feel more positive and look up inspirational quotes and such. I could always just do the work regardless of how I'm feeling.......
....but i think I'll try this way for another few hours before I resort to such things. I shall start with that song from matilda and look up quotes from my favourite authors.
....but i think I'll try this way for another few hours before I resort to such things. I shall start with that song from matilda and look up quotes from my favourite authors.
Even this blog doesn't help anymore
Study log 2. The very last minute seems to be running out quickly. It's 2.30 am, I'm at uni, I napped from 5pm until 10 and came to uni for my last all nighter. So far no work has been completed. My blog used to help me see the bigger picture for my degree. Not anymore I guess.
This semester is a disaster
This semester has gone so badly and there is still a big chance I could fail everything as I have one or two significant assignments/exams to go for each. I'm so close to the finish line, I've put so much.. not so much effort as stamina into this semester. The entire time I've been crawling on hands and knees, making my fevered, foggy brain concentrate and scraping through every task, every test, every social interaction.
Firstly there was China. The most amazing experience which I have failed to write about yet. It taught me to see the world as beautiful again and when I got back my perceptions were opened up and I found it difficult to shut off the influx of sensory data. Colours looked brighter, the distant crosings down the streets were no longer background but crawled to life with pedestrians and dogs and cars, walking down rundle mall changed from navigating my way through to noticing everyone's facial expressions. At first I appreciated this, I could look at things and just love how this colour juxtaposed with that one, how that couple's argument was cute and funny, but soon it became hard to look up without there being 20 or more things for my brain to process, sitting in cafe's became hard as one conversation nearby would be layered by another one the next table over, and then everyone in the cafes, murmuring and chinking spoons on cups, the traffic outside, and the coffee machine hissing and churning out freshly ground coffee and chairs scraping and the sounds would keep building up until it felt like screaming.
And of course after a high of travel there is always a low of once again being stationary. This low was harder to deal with because everyone just put it under the 'post-travel-blues' category and it wasn't that at all. I was deeply sad because I knew that my new perceptiveness and outlook on life wouldn't last and even though it became a burden, I anticipated and mourned its inevitable loss.
There was another aspect of China that impacted my return significantly which was around the theme of boys. It wasn't a crush so much as a genuine experience of what being in a relationship (as travel buddies make a lot of codependent decisions) felt like. But I will go into that another time.
The next two significant things that happened this semester was my leaving home and my getting the implenon. Moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do to your body and brain. The implenon is significant in all the rumours or scientific research into their suicidal side effects.
I haven't been so suicidal since Courtney and Josh refused to break up for me. I felt so empty and un ambitious, I no longer desired things for my life, I resented Josh for all the things he did to me and got super bitter about no one loving me, and became completely hopeless that anyone would ever love me. Study was no longer something I found self worth in and it wasn't that I wanted to die, but I started to see my death as something unavoidable, even telling my mum that I wasn't sure if i'd make it til christams. This made studying extremely difficult, because not only was I super fatigued all the time and had very little brain capacity for completing tasks, I had absoloutely no desire to do anything to better my future. My Canadian ex, with whom I remain friends helped me a lot through this time, my calm strong voice that I lay my head to rest on and that comforted me and kept me here. One day my mum prayed for me and the severe depression went away - I felt ambitious again and from then on it was only mild depression and bad anxiety that I had to deal with, like normal.
But it was already pretty far along in the semester. I missed a week at the start of term with China, and the depression knocked me out for about 4 weeks (I still attended but barely did any assignment work) so I was very far behind. Being so stressed and so sad for some reason meant that my body could not handle illness and I had a cold for most of the first half of semester, tonsilitus twice and the last two weeks of term I contracted some sort of flu which made me miss a few classes and then downed me for a week (the week that I had set aside to do all of my assignments.)
I'm not a very organised student at the best of times, but contracting an illness in the last minute stages of assignment due dates means I'm an even worse student. This whole semester just hasn't been fair. And I've lost the capacity to concentrate for long periods of time. Everything exhausts me and I just don't really feel like doing any of my work. My future is so shaky, I have no idea what I'd like to do and if I do want to do further study I have a lot of work ahead of me and its so uncertain that that is really my path. Thinking about my future and being ambitious used to pull me through, but I've grown so bitter about everything its hard to see anything positively.
So here we are, two days before my french exam, for which I have not begun to study, three assignments due or overdue (two of which I have not started) and one more exam for the weekend ahead, which I have at least read the books for. I don't know if I'm screwed. I might not be, everything might be ok. But I don't know.
I keep telling myself over and over it's not too late, you can do it, its ok, all is not lost, there's nothing to lose. The first steps are to write out sentence by sentence my research essay. Can I do that? Is it Ok? Is all really not lost?
Firstly there was China. The most amazing experience which I have failed to write about yet. It taught me to see the world as beautiful again and when I got back my perceptions were opened up and I found it difficult to shut off the influx of sensory data. Colours looked brighter, the distant crosings down the streets were no longer background but crawled to life with pedestrians and dogs and cars, walking down rundle mall changed from navigating my way through to noticing everyone's facial expressions. At first I appreciated this, I could look at things and just love how this colour juxtaposed with that one, how that couple's argument was cute and funny, but soon it became hard to look up without there being 20 or more things for my brain to process, sitting in cafe's became hard as one conversation nearby would be layered by another one the next table over, and then everyone in the cafes, murmuring and chinking spoons on cups, the traffic outside, and the coffee machine hissing and churning out freshly ground coffee and chairs scraping and the sounds would keep building up until it felt like screaming.
And of course after a high of travel there is always a low of once again being stationary. This low was harder to deal with because everyone just put it under the 'post-travel-blues' category and it wasn't that at all. I was deeply sad because I knew that my new perceptiveness and outlook on life wouldn't last and even though it became a burden, I anticipated and mourned its inevitable loss.
There was another aspect of China that impacted my return significantly which was around the theme of boys. It wasn't a crush so much as a genuine experience of what being in a relationship (as travel buddies make a lot of codependent decisions) felt like. But I will go into that another time.
The next two significant things that happened this semester was my leaving home and my getting the implenon. Moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do to your body and brain. The implenon is significant in all the rumours or scientific research into their suicidal side effects.
I haven't been so suicidal since Courtney and Josh refused to break up for me. I felt so empty and un ambitious, I no longer desired things for my life, I resented Josh for all the things he did to me and got super bitter about no one loving me, and became completely hopeless that anyone would ever love me. Study was no longer something I found self worth in and it wasn't that I wanted to die, but I started to see my death as something unavoidable, even telling my mum that I wasn't sure if i'd make it til christams. This made studying extremely difficult, because not only was I super fatigued all the time and had very little brain capacity for completing tasks, I had absoloutely no desire to do anything to better my future. My Canadian ex, with whom I remain friends helped me a lot through this time, my calm strong voice that I lay my head to rest on and that comforted me and kept me here. One day my mum prayed for me and the severe depression went away - I felt ambitious again and from then on it was only mild depression and bad anxiety that I had to deal with, like normal.
But it was already pretty far along in the semester. I missed a week at the start of term with China, and the depression knocked me out for about 4 weeks (I still attended but barely did any assignment work) so I was very far behind. Being so stressed and so sad for some reason meant that my body could not handle illness and I had a cold for most of the first half of semester, tonsilitus twice and the last two weeks of term I contracted some sort of flu which made me miss a few classes and then downed me for a week (the week that I had set aside to do all of my assignments.)
I'm not a very organised student at the best of times, but contracting an illness in the last minute stages of assignment due dates means I'm an even worse student. This whole semester just hasn't been fair. And I've lost the capacity to concentrate for long periods of time. Everything exhausts me and I just don't really feel like doing any of my work. My future is so shaky, I have no idea what I'd like to do and if I do want to do further study I have a lot of work ahead of me and its so uncertain that that is really my path. Thinking about my future and being ambitious used to pull me through, but I've grown so bitter about everything its hard to see anything positively.
So here we are, two days before my french exam, for which I have not begun to study, three assignments due or overdue (two of which I have not started) and one more exam for the weekend ahead, which I have at least read the books for. I don't know if I'm screwed. I might not be, everything might be ok. But I don't know.
I keep telling myself over and over it's not too late, you can do it, its ok, all is not lost, there's nothing to lose. The first steps are to write out sentence by sentence my research essay. Can I do that? Is it Ok? Is all really not lost?
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