2024-12-04

The Academic Pre-Apocalypse

Subsection

Ahhh. It's that time again, I am less than a week away from final exams for this quarter. I don't feel entirely prepared, but I have hope that my academic performance so far will grant me some breathing room for exam scores. Who am I kidding, I've been a bit of a mess this quarter; the sophomore slump is real.

I think I'll be able to pull through all my classes with either A's or B's as long as I don't completely fumble this. I'm just looking forward to winter break. I keep telling myself that all the things that I've neglected-- my sleep schedule, social life, mental health, future plans-- will be easy to set right once I get this pressure off my back; but then what happens when the next quarter starts and the pressure is on? This doesn't feel sustainable, but I've already done it for a year previously so...

Outside of school, I've been trying to get more involved in stuff just for fun. I've been trying to return to the habit of practicing my guitar more; I haven't been able to very much since school started again. I don't want to lose my progress in something that I really care about because I focused too much on school. My brother has also been teaching me TIG welding, and I have to admit that it's a lot of fun. Something about moving a ball of blinding, blistering hot plasma around like it's the business end of a pencil is very charming. I've only flashed myself twice now; it's amazing how much light a welding hood filters out... I've never seen something so bright as an unfiltered welding arc.

I've also been trying to get into running/jogging. But that's mostly a coping mechanism for the stress of school. It also helps with sleeping... although now I've sadly moved onto to just popping benadryl to knock myself out if I need to. It's not healthy or sustainable, but it's only another week before I'm done!

Maybe it's the season, but I've been really nostalgic these days. It isn't that something is quite missing now, but it definitely feels that things were easier in the past. Its funny, I seem to alternate between hoping for the future and mourning what I can't go back to anymore. In part, this might be a byproduct of stress from school, but some part of me just feels off these days; like I'm missing the point. Do you ever have those dreams where you're trying to find or meet up with someone, but keep getting sidetracked? No matter how you try to get there or be with them, something always drags you away at the last minute? Anyways, this is getting kind of heavy.

I have a quiz tomorrow (technically today, I'm writing this at 1:27AM). I'm gonna call it a night. I think I'll try and add new entries here at least once a week at minimum. That way I'll have something to do, even if nobody reads them right now.

Catch ya later Alligator.

This came up on YT autoplay while writing this entry, it's a real bop... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efdcTEAhLkE