I Failed

The test was awful. I got maybe four hours of sleep each of the nights preceding the exam, and was studying for many of the hours between. I was in a fatigued, anxious daze. I studied from 2 AM to a couple hours before the exam at 9 AM, and the exam was so taxing, and I so hopeless, that I spent much of the last portion focusing on just staying awake enough to read the question and pick some answer that somehow reverberated with it in my mind. I debated walking out, considering what a waste it felt like.

The next day, all of the friends I waited with at the airport got an email telling them that they had failed. I received no email. Delayed flight meant a free night at the airport for a few hours, then an early flight the next day. 

Tired, hungry, suddenly bereft of the studying that had constantly occupied my mind for the past few months, I did not know what to do with myself. So I drank and watched the first Lord of the Rings movie. Hungover, I had lunch with family the next day. They had me talk through the hypothetical situation of having actually passed this exam. This, by the way, is the worst thing to do if you do not yet know.

Despite my reservations, hope surged in me a little, even as reasoning tried to squash it. This resulted in troubled, anxious sleep and fitful dreams. I awoke to a memory of checking my email and finding a passing grade. Wondering if this was dream or reality, I checked my email to find my confidence quickly smothered and brushed aside. The email displays quite clearly the word "FAILED" in all caps, so there's no moment of uncertainty.

I sleep till the afternoon and then force myself to go get food, because my intake is down to one meal per day. After hitting up some Pokemon gyms and catching/hatching some new ones (holiday Pikachu), I end up back at home for awhile. And my mom asks how I'm doing, and I reply "eh". Then she says, without any thought as to how cruel such a statement would be, "You should speak more positively, like Trump. Look where it got him." And the empty vacuum of space that anxiety was beginning to vacate suddenly filled up with our good friend anxiety. Not only that, but I had to justify to my mom how I can speak realistically (quite negatively) and still find success. She countered by telling me that she had Bible verses to justify her argument. I quoted from Genesis on the story of Abraham's belief in hope that goes against reason, despite how negatively he and his wife sometimes spoke of the realistic possibilities. She strongly disagreed with me and all I could tell her was that I failed miserably every time I tried speaking positively about practical things when I didn't have real proof. False hope is something I very much despise.

So it's been a rough week. Well, a rough semester. My mom consistently ignores it when I tell her what the actual issue is, and she points out something far more minute as being the underlying problem. Only a few more weeks of dealing with her though. Then I move.

However, my time on the island had its pleasant moments. I got to be around like-minded people again. All scientists, all very intelligent, and, to my knowledge, nearly all of them are first-generation immigrants. A friend of mine from Pakistan (who is not Muslim, by the way) is worried about his visa status in the future. Because, of course, our demagogue president-elect has had only one consistent promise in his campaign, and that is to get rid of these immigrants from Middle Eastern countries.