Last exam

22 Jun 2006

Is tomorrow at midday. Yay. I’m so tired and generally over uni right now and think I’m getting sick. Hopefully I won’t be properly sick until after 1.40 tomorrow. Don’t really care what happens then, it’ll be great. Now, after this post, I’m off to get sleep before midnight for the first time in forever, after a vaguely moderately possibly productive session with Tori and one of her friends from college (where else? Except Alex, I hardly know anyone in any of my courses, still! So hopeless…) wherein I discovered how little I know. So tomorrow… pouring over quotes and generally cramming and getting more stressed, but I have to leave here at roughly 11 anyway so it’s not as though I’m exactly going to get a lot done. Whatever. Hopefully it’ll be not-stressful and enjoyable. I’m probably whining about this exam and none of the others because its a subject I actually care about and am annoyed at myself for not having done more for it. The course hasn’t been the most interesting in the world — as in, it’s good, but I can think of other texts/themes/periods I’d rather be studying — but, regardless, it’s still a subject about which I’m generally passionate and not wanting to let go of. I hate finishing subjects because of what happens after them… there’s some kind of attachment, even with non-enjoyable ones, where even months later you’re still contemplating everything you did wrong. Well, where you = me. I speak the good English.

Seriously, though. I had a nightmare about having just not bothered going to my Business exam in January this year (the exam was, what, November 9?) — which was very nearly true, I hadn’t studied much and left the exam early and was thinking IN the exam of how much I was completely bored by it and wanting to be somewhere else (where I was going after the exam) — and then I realised (still in the dream) that I didn’t actually give a crap because I already had my UAI. Whatever. Not that the UAI meant much. I’m in Arts and not even sure I want to be in Arts anymore. This is all completely ridiculous, by the way. As if I could do anything else. I’d decided two years ago that anything involving numbers was out… so that basically means I’m going to be an unemployed homeless person living in Newtown selling hand-written poems, or teach. Well, okay, fine. I lie. There are a few other choices… but even plumbers do more maths than I.

I hate it when people aren’t even trying to derail your entire mode of thinking and succeed anyway. Succeed is the wrong word, I suppose, because there was no intent. Either way. I was happy, damn it. Well… no, I suppose I wasn’t. (Am’n’t?) Just… don’t make me make more decisions. I’m too fickle and generally pathetic for that. So, next semester? Hopefully everything will fly apart, mutate into some completely different shape, just for variety. Hah. Variety, in case you missed it, is a disguise for “I really want everything to be different from how it is now but won’t say that because that’d be too blatant”.

And this post is an exercise in written conversation. I normally write somewhat like I speak (yeah, big words and all, because I’ve fooled myself into thinking I have a somewhat-effective command of language… which works completely until you come across someone more arrogant than yourself and more self-deluded in their own brilliance, whereby it becomes wholly evident to myself that I know nothing, as, clearly, do they. Only their illusion is stronger to outsiders not already in this massive joke that is the farcical mask we don daily. Hmm, ironic that I worked so many big words into that.) but I cannot speak normally. So what’s this? This is doubting and chatty and… it feels like a phone call I haven’t had for a while, actually, only with a little more teenage angst. I’m still entitled to another year and a half of that, note. How odd. I had not associated myself with that (age group) for at least that same period of time again now, but it does make a lot of sense. Or, at least, it’s a convenient excuse.

Hey, look at me, I’m not meant to be intelligent or informed or to have a clue what’s going on. I’m meant to be taught, not teaching. Spoon feed me some more. There’s this massive reversal… I used to write as though I had some sort of authority, too, and got away with it. This year… what? What? Doubt crept in… actually, I wasn’t even the first to notice it. I got a comment on an essay from ages ago that perplexed me, so (I suppose) I ignored it:

[…] on that matter, there are times when you could be more direct. “It sems clear,” “as it stands,” “such it is that”, and others, express either a self-deprecation which in your case is unnecessary, or — meaninglessness.

By all means, analyse my writing, but please not like that. Doubtless, I will be peppering tomorrow’s exam with similarly superfluous phrases that exist purely to pad and disguise a genuine lack of insight and knowledge of the subject matter at hand. Maybe they’ll give a nice passage for us to dissect. I could have fun with that, I suppose. Oh, I don’t know. There’s not much left to whine about. So I’ll go to sleep now and not have much more to say about it tomorrow. I never say much about exams once they’re past (insert horrific pun here). Passed isn’t good enough. I could not go to this exam (it’s 30%) and pass. I don’t want to pass, I want to be able to think like I used to (capacity for, not subject of). I’m stuck between the real world and uni and one won’t force me to think whilst the other won’t allow me to… my brain only has a certain degree of elasticity; torn between the two it will surely haemorrhage soon enough. And then I shan’t be able to at all. I knew I couldn’t do both! Why did I choose to? How can I now choose not to? Time for holidays is so here. First, to a little island called Sleep…