Second semester is a blur. I don’t know where it went. The stress of constant deadlines, club nights to look forward to and the wisps of gossip here and there made time run faster and cut my degree shorter. I mean, that’s the way it makes sense in my head, because I don’t want this degree to be over. I’ll actually have to work. I’ll actually have to be a proper adult (even though I’m 20). I’ll have to be mature and responsible and these kind of words just make my head hurt. Thinking about it more though, the fact that I have to study Maths for another year sends me to some dark places. My head has had enough. It screams at me everyday for choosing this degree and not joining Bollywood to become an item girl.
Constantly debating on whether I should drop out and become the next Nora Fatehi is a serious daily brain teaser for me, because I just don’t seem to have the motivation I used to anymore. It’s so weird, since I spent all of first year working more than 16 hours a day, trying to be the top person on my course and the happiness I felt of only half achieving that will be missed; I’m very far from being the top person on my course currently! Nowadays, I just debate on whether I even have the capacity to stay alive on this boat of relentless Mathematicians.
It’s not an uncommon feeling, this. They say you lose all the pent up motivation and nerdy eagerness you previously had around the end of second year and I have to say, they’re not wrong. I am done out. I say this everyday, but I am. I should be looking over my Finance module notes and recapping on everything I don’t understand, which is basically all of it. I, however, decided I want to write to avoid it today. Tomorrow, I’ll think of another excuse!
It’s just become excuses on excuses for me. I really don’t want to do this degree sometimes and it’s so excruciatingly difficult that it gives me physical and mental pain. I cry at least once a week, because I still have imposter syndrome and I avoid seeing my Maths friends on bad mental health days; I can’t cope with another person telling me they got 19/20 when I just about got 10. To feel better and lighten my mood, I call my parents. It just gets worse from there. The things I want to achieve are reiterated to me, the things that truly seem unattainable at this point. I get reminded of the thirst of knowledge I had, which has morphed into a survival and memory game. It hurts the most when I just want them to sympathise, tell me I’m really intelligent and I can do this. I just want them to listen and not be typical Asian parents for once, because I already know and feel everything they’re saying. I’m still struggling.
I talk to them about how I just want to live without the guilt of not doing work for just a day, because all I think about is how a whole summer has gone and a whole new summer will come back. That’s all I count on. I get to live. Just live. I get to enjoy day and night. They don’t just fade into the corners of my sight, because I’ll feel the temperatures of a summer day change instead of being sat indoors; pupils permanently glued to the screen and a radiator that seems to never be on the right knob.
I’m tired. I am beyond exhausted. The only thing that makes me stay exactly where I am is the end. I am waiting and also wanting to delay the end. I love University, it’s given me all the conventional things you always hear about- friends that have become family and experiences I’ll never forget, along with so much more. This degree though, I think it will suck the life out of me by the end and even after letting my emotions shatter on a web page, I’ll allow it. I want it and I have no other job but to get it. If I’ve started, damn it, I will finish it.
So yes, the ending to this little episode would win bronze. It’s like coming to the finish line very steadily and promisingly, all in triumph and then purposely slowing down to let someone else win. The audience had their hopes up and so did you, but there’s something else going on and you know you have to get through that first.
I know this is how a lot of you feel. It’s normal. It’s okay. Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re amazing.
