Coping with Stress

In order to cope with my currently extreme amount of stress, I am going to waste yet more time by writing a quick blog entry, inspired by my lovely fellow blog-writer, whom I cannot tag in this entry because I'm not skilled enough at blogging. I recently spent the past 15 minutes praying a million had left me interesting Facebook messages and taking note of recent updates to waste some time. I did just come out of a class, come on, gimme a break!

I have had quite a few failures this week which have dampened my mood, but there are times when one must say, "'Tis enough," and move forward. It began with my horrendous Hebrew oral recording first thing Monday morning. I was completely unprepared, as I immediately and horrifyingly discovered. --- I have just had the realization that I love using adverbs...I wonder if this is a bad thing? --- We had two readings to record and for some reason, perfectionism reared its ugly head. I did not finish both my readings in our designated time slot. I was mortified. It was all I could do not to lose it and run sobbing into the bathroom. This has never happened to me before with Hebrew. Somehow I managed to keep my cool - afterall, I had not thought over my options nor discussed them with my professor. If either of those near-future incidents turned sour, then I would allow myself the emotional punishment. I could not, however, keep myself from becoming detached from the lesson for the remainder of class. That stupid little sobbing bug kept biting me. But I made it through and told my professor that I hadn't finished the second recording. She was just as shocked as I was, "Alli, what happened?" I wanted to shout, "THAT WAS THE MOST DIFFICULT READING YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN FOR OUR LEVEL AND I DIDN'T HAVE THE TIME TO PRACTICE YOUR STUPID READINGS! I'M APPLYING TO PHD PROGRAMS AN WANTED TO SPEND THANKSGIVING IN HAPPINESS!" But I more tactfully replied, "I was just being a perfectionist and lost track of time...hehe." She said that that was it and there was nothing I could do. That stupid sobbing bug came running back again, but I composed myself a second time and asked, "But what about the make-up date?" "Of course, that's what you have to do!" Oh, jeeze, thanks for making me panic, Prof; there was simple explanation the whole time. Luckily, I passed my first recording and the make-up is very soon. I was worried it would be held closer to the end of finals, like December 23rd or something evil like that.

Now I'm holding back panic attacks about my applications (the first one is due TOMORROW) and fear my writing sample isn't quite up to snuff. The last thing I want is for my writing sample to be the cause of my failure to become a PhD! So here I sit, in the fine arts library, pushing off the anxiety and limited time frame in which to fix up my writing sample while simultaneously completing my statement of purpose, Hebrew homework, and Akkadian translation. What I really want to do is scrap everything but Akkadian because Akkadian is my new love child and what I want to study for future research! Stupids...