#What a difference... a day makes...#

My god. What a bizzarre 24 hours filled with massive highs and some pretty fucking deep lows. I don't know how much I want to write about the lows today. It might be one of those things that I just need to deal with on my own and make sense of it before i can talk to other people about it. I still feel kinda.... empty. I guess I am just very drained today physically, mentally and emotionally. Really emotionally...

Well.
Lets start at the start.

After posting a blog at about 9 last night, I minced around on the net till 11 in the knowledge that I had done exactly zero revision for the double politics exam i had in the morning. I had been all blazé about it completely ignoring the feeling in the back of my mind that was saying "This is your hardest exam. You know you have to revise for it." To put my mind at rest I made myself go to bed at what is currently an early time 11pm. I intended to get up at about 6 or half past to do a bit of revision. I asumed I could do it all, after all I had revised the entire Sociology of Religion syllabus and typed it up in note form in three hours the other morning just before my exam (much to the annoyuance of Becky) and the exam went really well. But as I was in the bathroom doing my nighttime routine I got thinking (as I usually do).

The past 14 years of my life have been sent in schools learning so that one day... I can get a nice job and live happilly ever after. Everything you ever learn goes into your final set of exams. For some people that is their GCSEs but for me and lots of other people it is my A levels. As I progressed through my A level years my effort level has dropped lower and lower until I was doing the bare minum necessary to get thorugh without any incident. This suited me fine up until about that moment. My life was beginning to feel empty and without any real purpose or direction. I was drifting, not accomplashing. I had become lazy and was going to make the whole of those 14 years into a bit wet limp across the finish line. I began to think about what would have happened if if I did my exams differently. Would I glow with pride knowing hta I had done my best? I didn't know. It is not since the days of Yr9 PE that I had felt that in school. I had never needed to really push myself. I have always been lucky enough to have had the genes and the social background to do well. I mean both of my parents are clever as are my brothers there has to be something in the genes there and my social characteristics...

We learnt about what characteristics make you the most likely to succeedd in school. It was like a ticklist of me! White, girl, Middle Class, live in a nice area, I have been to the top state schools in Doncaster - Edenthorpe Hall has recieved top marks from OFSTED on several occasions, Hungerhill gets some of the best GCSE results in Doncaster and Danum 6th form is so good that Universities actually know the school!

So I guess I never really had to try because it was all there for me already. Don;t get me wrong, it isn't that I have coasted all these years beacuse I didn't. I do pay attention in class and so my homework but I never really gave school that extra 10% than I put into stuff that I do for myself like learning new instruments and drawing and stuff.

I sat in the bathroom and thought. "What if..." I wondered what would happen if for these last 3 days I worked to the max and really realised my potential. If I really wanted to I just knew that I could pull out something special and get some damn fine results that I could be proud of rather than just acknowledge as expected.

My mind drifted to what I wrote ages ago in this very blog about not wanting to just drift through but.... blitz it! Do it as damn good as I could and really be happy with the result. Then my mind drifted to something wonderful that Mrs Lucy Pond - a drama teacher at Hungerhill said to me and the whole production team just before the performance of a lifetime in Bugsy Malone. She said...
"I want you to imagine that within us all is a flame.... this flame is a little flicker in your tummy. Now when you go out there and perform that little flame will turn into a ball of fire and you will act harder than you ever have before. You will all give the best performance you have ever given and feel fantastic afterwards. Now.... go out there and do it."

Those words have stayed with me ever since that cast did the most amazing performance I have ever seen. Everybody was so good that they did everything spot on and then added little bits here and there that just made the performance fabuulous. Even me on the dinky school keyboard did a flawless performance and I was so crap in the stageband!

Those words are what originally made up my mind that I wanted to be a journalist. Whenever I think about it I can feel that flame in my tummy and at that moment as I sat in the bathroom, it became a blazing ball of fire.

Suddenly from nowhere it was like I was a different person. I became super assertive and awake and booted my ass in gear. I grabbed my school file of hundreds of messy scribbled noted of no order and tipped them on my knee. I spent the next hour and a quarter sorting out the politics notes into 8 highly organised piles and disgarding the others on the floor. At the end of the evening at 12.20 I had 9 piles of notes organised into subject that I could grab at 6 the next morning and type up into some brilliant notes. I had arrived again! I was back in the zone!

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I woke up this morning at 5.51am after dreaming that I had forgotten to take my sheets with me to an English exam and panicking. I woke up feeling strangley good for that time of the morning and went downstairs to make a massoff coffee and, unusually, some breakfast.

I cannot even remember the last time I had breakfast. Usually I feel sick if I get up before 6.30 and dont really feel like eating anything until at least 10am. Today however I was actually rather hungry so I made myself a bacon and cheese bagel and the most ridiculous coffee ever divised by man (two heaped spoonfuls of Kenco extra rich, one teaspoon of drinking chocolate and two sugars!), I figured I really needed a rush whether it be caffeine or sugar or in this case, both :)

I managed to get about half of the revision done before I began listening to my Dad downstairs. He seemed to be on the phone to what sounded like the Doctors. I guessed it must be Mum as she had looked a bit ill as I had passed her on the way to the shower. I thought it must be something quite ba as my Mum never goes to the doctors ever. Its like a thing our family has, you have to be on deaths door before any of us go to the doctors. We consider it a waste of time as unless its an emergency, whatever you have has cleared up by the time you can see the doctor.

I was slightly concerned but for some reason put it to the back of my mind. I am not really sure why as usually I would have been really worried. Maybe it was because I had really begun to focus on the exam and my revision. Well I figured that something was wrong but I knew it wasnt too bad as I had heard Mum having a conversation with Dad. Before I knew it Dad was calling me so I could get a lift. "thats ok" I thought "If I grab the rest of my notes I can read them in the car and outside the exam room". The car journey took 5 minutes and despite the fact I arrived 15 minutes early, I was one of the last to arrive. We started straight away.

I remember feeling a certain amount of confidence but also a lot of nervousness. This was the exam that would dictate my future. It was the exam that I was most likely to drop grades in and maybe not scrape what I need for Sheffield. I could tell that I had treated this exam as important as I has on all my lucky trinkets and usually I limit them to one exam each! I had my chinese luck earings on, my lucky stripey socks and most importantly of all - my special pendant.

My pendant is no ordinary pendant. You may think I am cuckoo but that doesnt matter... Whether real or just an effective mind trick, I concentrated some of my positive feelings into the pendant when i was tripping over myself concerning they who shall not be named [see my writing stuff blog]. By putting all my positive psi (see www.psipog.com if you are confused) I now have happy feelings on tap when I hold the pendant in my hand. Brings me luck and good karma :)

Anyhoo. The first paper was a gift and went really well - better in fact than all of my ones done in class. The second one went pretty well too only one question was really tricky and everyone found that tough. So there ya go. I suddenly snapped into pushing myself forwards and doing this thing right! Woo!

I would love to continue this but the other half of today will have to wait as I am rather tired and have to do it all agin tomorrow.

Good fry! :)