Import from Spark People 4/8/2009

I’ve felt better since I had my monumental vent the other night but I still feel antsy. It's probably the way I should be feeling, given that I am waiting on so much to happen: college, medical school, the house. How can I fix it though? I know if I were more proactive that I would feel better, so I'm going to try and write down what I can do to ease my anxiety.

College: I still believe I can achieve the end goal of 2 A*s next summer; I believe that I have the potential to pull that out of the bag. What stands between me and glory is the shedload of work I have inflicted on myself by not working hard enough last year. And believe me, I'm scared of that work. I'm scared that I won't be able to learn it all in order to get my grades...read into that the deep but entirely reasonable fear of failure. It chases me but doesn't hit me around the head hard enough to make me work. Plus I work stupidly. My stupid perfectionism demands it of me. I end up knowing the first few pages of a book amazingly well...and the rest gets rushed through in the last few days before the exam. I have to get over that. Perfectionists set themselves up for failure, after all.

Plan: I have to start: tomorrow. Work out how long I have between now and the January exams but also just pick up the damn books and start writing, start getting through those bloody past papers, start learning what I should already know.

Medical school: I have two months before the medical school applications are in. Again, my procrastination stems from fear: the fear of making such an enormous decision, the fear of having to deal with my mother's inevitable disapproval, the fear that the money will run out and that I won't be able to go and that I'll look stupid to everyone...

Plan: I need to get all the prospectuses ordered, get to all the open days I can, sit the UKCAT, get my personal statement written, get my references sorted and speak nicely to Nick. Also I need to get college work sorted because if I fail again, I won't be going in the first place.

The house: urgh...my main worry is all my finances at the moment, so I need to get the account sorted. I also need to organise the current mortgage paperwork and send off the life insurance forms. I don't think there's much else I can do after that, until we start actually moving and then I'll need to research the bills etc.

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In the spirit of this post, I thought I would share something. I figured something out about myself the other day: I am passive and now that I know that about myself, I hate it. You see, I will wait until the very last moment before I get things done. I always left my homework until the night before school, I never do my filing until the box is overflowing, I never stock up at work until I really, really have to. I also recently realised that I am not consistent. I have never worked at something consistently all my life. My studies are a great example. Combine it with the perfectionism and you have trouble: I have to do everything perfectly in one sitting to consider myself a success. Recipe for failure or what? Maybe it's because my memory is terrible: I can't remember what I did the last time I studied so how can I be sure that I didn’t miss something. In that sense, I don't trust myself. I need to pay more attention to everything, but how do you do that?

Whose fault is the above? It's mine, sure. But I'd like to pose a question: at what point is my brain not my brain? You know what I mean: you make your to-do list in the morning. Good intentions make you think that you'll finish the list BUT when it comes to doing it, your brain talks you out of it. "You'll do it later, come and watch TV," it says. Surely, if I am as well-intentioned as I think I am my brain won't put up a fight with me? Then why does it? Why am I fighting with myself? I wish I had the frickin' answer, that's a cert.

So with all my ramblings etc. out of the way for the night and a good list of personal objectives scribbled down in the new BFF, El Moleskine, I am off to bed. Tomorrow will not yield fun because I will be working (sort of) but tomorrow afternoon I might get an inch closer to who I want to be.