Know Your Worth

20

"I'm telling you, Miley Cyrus is a nepotism baby because Dolly freaking Parton is her godmother, not because of her Achy Breaky dad!" Sam declared, daring anyone at our table to disagree. 

How we ended up debating about nepotism and nepotism babies was a mystery because we had initially started our conversations with, you guessed it, bitching about our lecturers and tutors, even though we were barely a week into our semester break. 

Nothing brought people together like shared troubles and mutual dislike. 

I had no idea whether it was the cool weather or my cuter-than-usual outfit, but I was in good spirits this time. I was on cloud nine and it was a feeling that evaded me for quite a while in the weeks leading up to exam season. 

I couldn't fully relax because I was nervous about whether I had done enough for the papers. Soon, I'd get back my exam results and it would determine the future effort that I needed to put in for the coming assignments and tests. Not to mention my scholarship. 

I tried to forget, but sometimes I caught myself trying to remember a few of the questions on the exam paper and recalling what exactly I'd written to gauge if I could get a decent grade. 

As always, my brain would start to conjure up the worst possible outcomes and my good mood would be completely ruined. Panic would set in, despite it not making any sense because I wouldn't get the paper until another four or so weeks. 

Today I made my mind up to not think about what was done. I was going to enjoy myself as best as I could before going back to the salt mines. 

To treat myself, I went ahead and spent six dollars on an expensive slice of white chocolate and mocha cake. It was a fiscal travesty for me, but I convinced myself that I needed some semblance of happiness in my life, even if it comes from emotional eating. 

I could always burn the calories later. The only issue was that I had a little bit of a problem sticking to a routine. One thing that I'd painfully discovered after enrolling in Blackwell was that I could not stick to a strict routine for the life of me. 

No matter how fastidiously I'd planned my schedule, I would find a way to go off tangent and totally abandon what I'd set out to do that day. If I had organised my time to fit in some exercise at the gym, somehow I'd procrastinate and end up not going. 

If I had this grand master plan of ambitiously finishing seventy pages of reading economic frameworks in one shot, at most I could only make it past the thirtieth page. At times I would accidentally end up napping. Even if I set a timer, my groggy brain would just turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. 

My nap times ended up in comas that cost me my sleep cycle. 

A grievous error in university, because my ability to absorb what was being taught in lessons would be severely compromised. These problems would end up compounding into bigger learning gaps and in conjunction with the learning curves that only got steeper after every chapter, a huge mental breakdown would be inevitable in the future. 

Additionally, I could not resort to the pathetic recordings with the shittiest audio to learn or catch up. I needed to rely on my own trusty notes during the live lessons. 

With this newfound wisdom, I was careful in setting my own goals and allotting the proper amount of time for rest. This break was the perfect time to reset my sleep cycle, fix my energy throughout the day and come up with a decent to-do list that I could follow to the best of my abilities. 

I was worth more than my accomplishments, but at this critical point in my life, my grades can make or break my university experience. 

If my grades were alright and I could get to keep my scholarship, I'd obviously find my time here to be bearable. The converse would also be true; if my scores were crappy, it would affect my mentality for the next few years.