“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
Hey everyone
So, 29 days until your first exam! (Does that inspire the biggest wave of terror, or what?) I guess many of you are just about to explode at the thought of the 31st, or maybe even when your last exam is.
Unfortunately, I'm not here to motivate you today. Truth is, motivational posts are cheap, and they're short-term. Like, they're good for a week maybe at best, but I mean, how many people have actually stayed motivated for a long period time after reading a motivational post? It just doesn't happen.
Something long term, though, is breathing! I think we forget about it sometimes. Sure, we're all breathing. But when's the last time you stopped to take a deep breath and just think "man... this is great".
You might be wondering about the subject line... My Mum's a bit of a hippie - she works in welfare as a counsellor in a detox centre for people addicted to alcohol and/or other drugs, and she's this insanely patient and, as you can imagine, non-judgmental person. Growing up, she used to say the most -infuriating- phrase: be here, now.
God, it used to shit me up the wall! Where else do you think I could be, Mum?!
She still says it today. I have a bad habit of furiously jigging my leg wherever I'm sitting, or messaging people on my phone/constantly checking to see if there's someone I need to reply to or anything like that, and always, it's "start living in this moment".
Honestly, it works pretty well. I'd explain it to you, but I don't fully comprehend what that means yet. If you breathe, you'll get there.
Right now, we're getting a lot of threads/posts about people burning out, people too tired to study, people feeling so guilty about wasting all their time.
Instead of answering them as they crop up; here's my answer! I'd also like to
invite other students, past or present, to post on how they like to combat the stress or the "burnout".
Anyway, last year I obviously did a fair amount of work, particularly in the first half of the year - "Year 12s here, owmagawsh, gotta study so hard"... I remember having to do sprints before my first English SAC just to use the adrenaline because I was so shaky. Come the last English SAC I was like " I'm not even going to practice this book". Shit happens, your motivations dwindle. For me, it was when my Psych mid-year came back with an A. (I know, that's a really, really good score, but success is always relative to your aims, and I was aiming higher, so to me it felt like a fail). Like, Psych was meant to be my highest score; it was my best subject and if I had a chance of getting over 40 in anything, it was Psych. I always though "hmm, if I can pull like a 45 in Psych, and 38s/39s in my other subjects, I'll be sweet for the 90+, so when the A came back it was like "wow, I failed my best subject... I'm right and truly fucked now".
And yeah, I fell back into my old habits and started wagging school a bit and generally just not studying. So much procrastination and guilt/turmoil/self-loathing. I remember wagging period 1/2 Theatre Studies because I had a Psych SAC period 3 and knew I'd probably -literally- fail if I didn't cram the last AoS in those two periods. Around the same time, people on AN were saying how wagging to study for SACs was dodgy as. ANYWAY - you get the idea. My sleep was fucked, my health was fucked, everything was just shit. But I still wanted it really, really badly. What do? Take a mother fucking break, that's what.
I hate parties. Dead set, they shit me up the wall. I don't drink alcohol, so when I go to parties it's literally a bunch of drunk people trying to put drinks in my face or trying to talk to me (and talking to drunk people is just the worst conversation you'll ever get), and then when it gets later, me (gladly) making sure none of them break their skulls falling over or choke on their own vomit. I also don't really like being around too many people that much 'cause I feel like there's too much to take in. Generally, I hate parties. In 2012, prior to September, I think I went to one birthday dinner for a friend's 21st. I skipped one of my close friend's 18th parties, skipped a bunch of other 18ths that I probably really should have gone to. You get the idea. In September, I went to five parties - one every Saturday of the month, and there was one on Friday as well. Mostly because I knew I needed to do something. I was in a rut, I needed to get out.
I was in a vicious cycle that consisted of "oh my god, I need to study, it's going to be so embarrassing when I get a shit score and I will be so ashamed *goes on AN chat til 3am* --omg I'm going to fail I feel so guilty--" (Sorry to everyone on chat around that time for my bitching, love you guys)
So: I wasn't being productive at all. Not one shred. So I literally took a month off. I wasn't going to do anything anyway, was I? Nope. If I didn't take the month off, I would have done close to the same amount of work had I just taken it off, and I would have felt guilty the whole way through, and I would have gone into the exam period in the same cycle. Instead, I sacrificed a month's worth of work, and I was the height of productivity in the last weeks of October.
So here's what I'm saying you should do, assuming you're in a pretty bad rut right now: chill the fuck out. Stop. Breathe. Be here, now.I'm telling you, if you're in a really bad cycle right now,
the best thing for your score is to give yourself permission to drop everything on the condition that you will come back ten times harder. When you come back THIS WILL BE YOUR FINAL FORM.If you're struggling really bad right now, give yourself until the 10th of October to do a very minimal amount of work. If you still have SACs; bummer; make sure you do well. But honestly, do the bare minimum. NOT ONLY THAT: go and see a movie - maybe even by yourself; go to the beach; go to the SLV and lay on the grass and listen to the musicians and the people on drugs; go for a run every day; read your favourite book again (Harry Potter 5 anyone? GET ON THOSE OWLs); try to catch Feebas. I dare you. TRY TO CATCH FEEBAS.
And you know what? The whole time you can think "This is great. I'm allowed to do this; I don't even feel guilty. But boy-oh-boy, when I come back, I'm gonna go HAM.
Seriously: you don't even realise how much time three weeks is when you're studying like a monster. It's huge. I honestly went from ~7.5ish/10 to 10/10 (according to VCAA, anyway) in three weeks. It's huge. Please believe me. So don't feel like if you chill out this next week that you're ruining everything, because you simply aren't. Have you ever just not attended a day of school? Now's your chance. Go smell the roses instead, it'll be great. Ultimately, it's better to relax now and have increased productivity later than to keep struggling along now and ultimately be forced to keep struggling along later.
*Note: if you do this and then don't come back in your final form then the plan falls the pieces. It's a strategy for the last leg of the race; not a week to slack off. Think of it like that. It's your strategy. This is a strategy/logic/tower-defence game, and you need to allocate your resources appropriately so when you get to the boss level you can FINISH HIM.
TL;DR (I know it was, I have a words problem): CHILL THE FUCK OUT AND DON'T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT IT BREATHe AND SMELL THE ROSES AND COME BACK IN YOUR FINAL FORM AND DESTROY THE EXAMS AND BE PROUD OF YOURSELF NO REGRETS OK I HAVE AN ESSAY DUE ON FRIDAY THAT I HAVEN'T STARTED BUT NOT EVEN GUILTY BECAUSE IT'S ALL IN THE STRATEGY OK BYE HAVE FUN
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