Argh (creativity too low for better title right now)

I should be writing a report (due Tuesday) instead of blogging, but I am in a ‘want-to-throw-up stressed’ phase right now, and I’m hoping that writing this will get it out of my system just a bit.

I found a quote from one of the South Park creators that sums up how I feel about classes:

Trey Parker has a confession to make. "I've started confiding in people, other artists mostly, that I hate making 'South Park' and I always have," he said during a recent visit to New York. He continued: "It's super stressful. I'm always miserable. I want to kill myself every week."

It's the conflict of being completely stressed out by something that one does pretty well. I've gotten good marks so far, but I've also gotten crushingly depressed and panic-ridden during the terms I was taking classes. You might notice that my musings on exploring a PhD were during the summer, when I could just do research instead of take classes. Research on its own is a fun challenge; research for a class project with a deadline is a continuous experience of, "Oh my god, I have to get this running or else I will be trying to write a report with two days’ worth of... or no... data."

I have stressed about class deadlines for a very long time. I remember a (probably) third or fourth-grade experience, when I put off my project (making a contour map of the US with paper mache) to the last minute. My mother and I worked on it late into the night; I don't think it was a third-grade all-nighter, but it was pretty late compared to what I was used to. This also demonstrated the 'externally applied motivation' that I mentioned in my previous book comment.

One reason for my stress is that I have experienced horrible school failures, so I can’t just calm myself saying, "Don’t worry; problems like that don’t actually happen to me." I have walked into tests where I looked at the problems, one by one, realized I could not answer a single one, and wrote a note that I was dropping the class on the back. I have gotten tests back where they gave me 2-3 'sympathy points’ for each 25-point question--i.e., "Well, here’s a point for writing something down, even if it is a load of crap."

I think several things are making me feel this way right now. I just spent a few hours in lab, expecting all the pieces I have been working on to come together and start collecting data. Instead, I was stuck there until 9, and I am still getting nothing for data. Also, not having dinner through all of that didn't help. Finally, the weather went from this (shorts weather) at the beginning of the month, to the soul-destroying, grey, overcast, rainy, cold crap we've been getting for the past week or so.



And great... daylight savings ends in a week... Well, I just have to survive a month and half of the term after that.

Well, I think the food is starting to kick in... I'm feeling a little better now. Still, I wanted to be 80% done with my report tonight, and it’s already 11 PM. Suck.