Saturday, December 15, 2012

Cycles.

I feel like my life goes between cycles of panic and exhaustion. Just centered around tests. When I'm good, I'm good. And when life is under stress, that's just my new normal.

I seem to have a good amount of mental willpower. But it only goes all out for one thing at a time. I'm on roll with my school work, or I'm on roll with the personal health thing. Never both, never balanced.

Yeesh. I'm not even really thinking in full sentences right now. Let me start over.

Today I came home and passed out around 5, woke up at 10:30. I'm in the burn out phase of my test cycle where I crash. Tomorrow, I'll come to the realization that I have additional exams on Tuesday, and I'll start ramping up into the panic cycle. This is where you spend every waking hour of your day studying or sitting through class prying your own eyes awake. To keep myself on track, I will call my study buddy, a sweet but sheltered girl who has the most unhealthy relationship with studying that I know. As in, last year her diet was probably 75% ramen (I'm being fucking conservative.) because she 1. didn't have the time to grocery shop, 2. spent so much time on campus studying that she needed shelf life stable foods and 3. could not pull herself away to spend more than a minute thirty to cook a meal.

To boot, despite her immense ability to memorize absolutely everything, her confidence in the material is terribly shaky. Which causes her to study more, which causes her to run herself into the ground more. Despite all of this, she's still always the most kind and friendly person you'll ever meet and is always looking for company...to study. Which you have to steel yourself for. She will pound you with a million questions and if you ask her what to she wants to focus on...the answer is always, always, everything. Let's do ALL the lectures. Lets study as long as possible. I had to start putting my foot down on how often I got myself into this because it's overwhelming.

And it's funny. Because despite being one of the smartest people I know, she puts me on a pedestal. Hanging on every word I say. Yet this may be the first time since lecture I'm looking over the material. Hell, it's almost always the first time since lecture I'm looking over the material.

Now that some background is out of the way, I can go on and continue telling you about the cyclic mess I've gotten myself into. When it gets close enough to crunch time, I just let everything else go and to stick to the plan, I study with her. And we can be dysfunctional together. By the time the test comes around, I'm burnt out again and it all starts over.

But you'd at least get a couple of good days in between crash and panic. But it seems lately, I've let my sleeping schedule get so messed up, that the days between crash and panic are getting shorter. It's just one or the other. I've just got to keep myself up for the next couple of days and I can make it to winter break, reset, and be normal again. Real normal. Not this neo normal, I'm used to bizzaro stress world normal. We're going to make that happen.

I hate to sound stressed and mopey on here, but what I can't stand more is to lie and pretend everything is fine. There's a lot of fun moments that I really do want to write down, but I'm going to save them for winter break. No really! I've got a great story about the teacher they hired to teach the prostate exam to us and the stolen? er borrowed? hotel pool towel he used to clean up with. Yep.

I haven't been updating, but life isn't all bad. I am tired and worn, but I'm not alone in it. And like most of my class, we use humor to get through it. Of course, our humor can get pretty bad, especially when you get into the medical puns. But we take what we can get. ;)

Still, I do feel tired right now. And I feel guilty for being tired. Not because of my classmates. My boyfriend has his own cycles of exhaustion too, but his are with 24 hour on and 48 off shifts. So it's even harder for him to have a normal sleeping schedule, and the guy drives so much. He would never want me to feel this way, but here I am fighting my own mind apparently.

I'm going to get through these next couple of days, but I want my next goal to be tackling my sleeping issues. I'm being a little laxer with the paleo diet lately, because really. I am not in the mood to cook. It's becoming fairly obvious that my bloating problem is a wheat issue more than a milk one. I feel like I've learned something valuable and tangible with that last venture. Of course...now that comes with the added guilt of knowledge. I know exactly what kind of damage I'm doing every time I eat the stuff. This is really changing my relationship with food and I'll leave that subject for another day.

With that being said, I'm going to do my dishes and get back to bed. Thanks for bearing with me. I feel more comfortable about what I've got to do already.

1 comment:

  1. Oof. It's exhausting just reading that.

    I'm still somewhat weirded out by the idea of a teacher getting practice prostate exams in front of everyone.

    It sounds like you are a relatively sane person in an insane situation. Your study buddy -- we'll hopefully she doesn't live her life the way she studies. Priorities, sorting important from unimportant, knowing when to stop -- all are really crucial when you're working in a demanding field.

    Hope your break starts soon.

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