I apologize in advance, for this is the sort of post that I loathe to make. One that's about me, and directly connected to my life. But I think this captures a very interesting state, at least as far as my mental health goes.

I thought I might stop posting till the exams got over, but lately I've had a hard time going through a day without thinking about how I might actually fail a unit this semester. If it turns out that I don't, then this will be the worst case of paranoia that I've ever-experienced. I actually feel like I may get a panic-attack soon. I've been paranoid about things before, but never have I actively believed that I may fail an entire unit. Assessments, yes, but a whole unit, no.

Part of the problem is that I have already failed two assignments one assignment* (see edit) this term, and the more I think about it, the more it seems likely that I will fail a couple more. I have no idea why things have gotten to the state they are. It probably has to do with my manic-depression at the start of semester, eh? I was in no mood to do any form of study, and I guess I slipped further and further behind.

It strikes me that the moment that these marks are put online, the few seconds it takes for the page to load is like waiting for a moment of truth. Nervous ticks where the nervous mind plays all sorts of tricks on you. I can easily picture the future-me staring at a poor mark and just feeling like I've hit rock-bottom. At the same time, I can picture a future-me staring at a pass (not a spectacular mark, but a pass nonetheless) and laughing away this silliness. Oh how I hope it's the latter.

If it turns out that I do fail, watch out world, because I'm going to lash out. Hah, I couldn't resist; no, in truth, if I do fail, what will happen is I will probably go into another spiral of self-pity and soul-searching, with the icing on this infernal cake being me having to explain this failure to those around me. Especially parental-figures.

If I don't fail, I will update this post and make a mockery of myself for being so stupid.

I've remarked to a few people that I don't know anyone else whose marks could go down as much as 40% between two semesters, without a serious crisis occuring in their lives. What is it that makes me so untemperamental? I'm obviously a loose cannon, brimming with creativity and energy that I can't be contained...no, I kid you again, it's probably due to the fact that I am a narcissistic fool who has become blinded by grand idealistic notions of life, and subsequently forgotten how much I take for granted.

I don't know why, but I seem to have this almost instinctive reaction to script out conversations and events in my head well before they come to fruition. To be more precise, when the situation is bad, much like it is now. In my head, I explore virtually every way in which a conversation, say, ends up with me being in even worse shape than what I'm currently in. So, already I have scripted out in my head me having to ask an honours coordinator whether my WAM can be considered excluding software this term, after having failed it miserably, thereby ruining all future prospects, and so on, you get the general idea. I've also scripted out me having to schedule a meeting with the lecturer, trying to explain why I think I should be passed, and being denied on the basis of the tutor's impression of me (not a very good one). Oodles of pessimism or what? This, to me, is the strongest indication that I do indeed have serious, serious issues.

I would never be able to make it in the real world, precisely because of incidents like this. I give a whole new dimension to chronic paranoia, eh? It's times like this that I wish there were an interventionist God. (Maybe there is? Who knows.)

You also tend to realize that art can't always save you. No matter how powerful words, thoughts and feelings may be, nothing seems to matter in the face of such bleak desperation. If only I were stronger-willed, then I probably could embrace concepts more powerful than myself, and find the strength to do way with this excess paranoia. But it's always a case of "if only", ain't it? (No, it isn't, but humour me) I wanted to end this post with a nice poetic quote, an appeal to some higher power, but no, I won't do that. I am too nervous that the outcome of this situation will be a negative one, which will then mean that the quote will forever be tarnished, much like this post (which will surely go down in infamy in this little blog's history)

Edit:

* A funny thing happened with one of my "major" assignments, worth 15%. It was a machine marked assignment, where we had to hand in a program for a computer to mark. Now, obviously, the program that marks it isn't some highly sophisticated software, and as such it has some guidelines as to how the output should be formatted. For this assignment (which involved the computation of minimum spanning trees, for all 0 of you techies who read this), we had to display the output in sorted order.

I remember not being in the right mental state for that assignment, but it's hard to explain what a "right" mental state is. One big indication that things were not going well was when I came in on the day it was due forgetting to send my code in the morning. It just totally slipped my mind, even though it is there in nice bold letters on my calendar. So, I had to wait till I reached home to send in the code; it would still be well on time, but I felt uneasy that I forgot about an assignment worth 15%. I think the reason I forgot was that I hadn't done too much work on it that week because of another assignment (the one I am concerned about failing, and if I do, I will probably fail the entire unit due to the assessment requirements). Once I handed it in though, I was fairly confident that I would do alright; I was doubtful about whether I could get full marks, as one ought to expect with an assignment whose marking scheme as lax as this (if the output was right, you got full marks, no questions asked), but I didn't lose any sleep over it.

But then when the marks were published, I saw next to my SID a lovely 3 out of 15, a complete eyesore among the numerous 15s that littered the screen. Looking at the logs, I realized what went wrong. Would you believe it, the ouput for my program was not sorted. I had remembered a few days before that this was a requirement, and I thought I had made the necessary changes to sort the results, and then I conveniently forgot about it. But whoopee, my answers were all correct, just unsorted, but the program didn't care - it just failed me in almost all the tests!

That started my descent into paranoia I think, because I have never fared that badly in a major assessment before; certainly not in the last 10 years or so. I know, I know, marks are meaningless and knowledge is what is important, but I'm not talking about the difference between a credit and a high distinction, this was twenty out of a hundred versus a pass. Naturally I couldn't rest properly that night, and when I woke up the first thing I thought about was what a terrible, terrible mess I had gotten myself into. This one bad assessment meant my overall mark for the unit shot down to 60%, while the other students were living it up with comfortable 90+s. Even with scaling and weighting, I figured I was royally stuffed.

Desperate to see if anything could be done, I mailed the lecturer, asking (no, imploring) him to review the logs, and see whether he would consider passing me. There's a bit of a story behind that too. Like I mentioned earlier, I often pre-script conversations in my head, and the one with the lecturer was no different. I envisioned him replying quite coldly saying "Tough luck", and on some days even with him shouting at me for being so careless. He had a fairly neutral view of me during semester; I never said much in tutorials, so he couldn't be irked at me not paying attention, but at the same time I had a feeling he wasn't too pleased that I had virtually zero participation in discussions, unless forced.

But, even with my mind feeding me these possible outcomes, I bit the bullet and sent the mail anyway. After doing so, I thought a bit about what might go through his head when he read it. I put myself in his position, and figured that I would probably be irritated at a student who was so careless in not following the specifications that were clearly laid out. I would probably think such a student were a slacker, someone who obviously didn't care enough to pay any attention to detail. Lord knows it has happened before; it's so easy to judge someone based on one incident or two, when the truth can be oh so different. I saddened me that people can form a very different opinion of you than what the truth is.

Anyway, I predicted that the lecturer would refuse to budge, and based on this loose assumption I started criticizing this form of assessment in my head. I (somewhat rightly) scorned the idea that marks were not being awarded for knowledge, but rather for rigid adherement to a set of criteria. I started philosophizing about how transparent marking schemes aren't necessarily good or fair, but they can easily pretend that they are. You get the idea - I kept revisiting these ideas in my head till I felt I would explode.

But then, I was amazed to find out that the lecturer had, firstly, taken the time to read my mail, secondly, that he decided to take the time to investigate the matter, and finally, and most amazing of all, that he decided to upgrade the mark to 14. He reduced one mark because he didn't think it would be fair to other students, and I understand and agree with that. Yet it turned out that all the endless chatter in my mind, of me scrutinizing how things could go wrong, all turned out to be useless speculation. As the dust settled, I was reprieved for a lapse in concentration when handing in the assignment, and given an equal opportunity (not having to worry about a 30% deficit) to demonstrate knowledge come the final exam.

I am not out of the woods yet, I am afraid. For though this tale was long and seemingly reaffirming, this was not the subject I was scared of failing (which shows you how bad things are going for me). No, the other one is still a large question mark, because I am praying that I will somehow manage to scrape through, but the voices of doubt are growing stronger by the minute. I think the panic-attacks I talked about previously have started to set in (loss of breath at regular intervals?).

I can only hope that very, very soon I can edit this once again and give you a nice long tale about how everything turned out for the best in this subject. Yet the pessimism is stronger than ever, unfortunately.