Post Summary: Studying and exams suck. They especially suck when you’re in a mental health slump. Said mental health slump is probably caused by study-related stress. Stress triggers depression, anxiety, OCD, and makes it hard for brain to function normally at important periods. Brain is very tired. N.B: this post is quite personal, so may disappear after a while.
Recently I’ve been joking a lot on Twitter and to my friends about how badly revision is going and how much I hate exams. I think that’s a pretty typical student-response to January exams.
I’ve been told I’m really bad at talking about things out loud, hence the conception of this blog, and lately I’ve been internally screaming into the void about life, so for once in my life I thought I’d actually talk. Type. Whatever. So the subject of this post is dealing with university and exams when your brain starts to malfunction.
I was a little reluctant to post this. I don’t like talking about my own, perceived, weaknesses, and I should also probably definitely be revising. But I’m going to, because this blog was conceived of as a way of helping express what I’m feeling to both myself and whoever else wants to read, and (hopefully?) being something other people in a similar position can relate to. But, I think I’m writing this post, above all, to make it real, because at the moment one half of my brain is writing everything off as an over-exaggeration.
I feel very disheartened at the moment because I feel like I’m not operating at my best. I’m tired, unmotivated, anxious, and depressed. I can’t get out of bed when I need to, even though I’m acutely aware I have a lot to do and little time.My mind is all over the place. I had, until mid-December, been feeling relatively okay, save for a few ups and downs, and I’ve read that this is a relatively common trend during the Winter months, particularly around Christmas. For me, this is has been a stark reminder that no matter how good I’ve been feeling, my mental health problems are always going to be there, even if I’ve attempted to stomp them down and ignore them, and there will always be the risk that things can start to deteriorating again.
It feels a bit of a kick, seeing as I’ve been really proud of myself for coming back to university and giving it another shot, and so far done pretty well in my assignments. This last semester has taught me, if anything, that when I put my mind to it, I can achieve good grades. It has also taught me that sometimes my brain doesn’t want to cooperate, and I need to learn to, somehow, overcome that. It just feels really unfair that on top of other, stressful stuff like exams.
I am starting to wish I had a little pause button for life that I could press so that I could sleep for a week and then come back to it. Or that my brain functioned a little better than it does now. Either or.
darcy: a world full of words 