18 March 2017

the emotional rollercoaster of finals


The daunting door of the auditorium is staring at me. It's less scary than the one of the hall. I have half of my possession stacked in a basket that I'm carrying. It's been over ten years of education and here I finally am feeling the most certain and uncertain of what will follow. There's no point adding up the points I already have: it will be what it will be despite the fives and threes.

The topics look clear. I look through the material: nothing interesting really. Luckily the third title allows me to write about philosophical nothings and nice make-the-world-better blah blah blahs. In half an hour I'm done with the mind-maps but I'm concerned with my rapid time-management and decide to spent another hour on planning.

The first draft is a messy word-vomit on the paper. It's not even long enough. So I scratch that and start over. There's a lot to fix and I spent the next hours trying to make my best effort resulting in the second draft. It's still too short and doesn't feel right at all.

There's still a little over an hour left but the blister on my middle finger is crying out of pain and my head isn't feeling the lightest either. I get myself together after a brutal pep-talk and start to work on the third and hopefully the last version. I have to force myself out of my comfort zones, to think outside the box but it all is worth it in the end. I get to hand in the most perfect paper I could have produce in those six hours and possibly one of my best works.

I run out full of cafeine or euphoria or the two mixed together and declaring the world of my success. The tears of joy quickly turn into the tears of sorrow as I slouch from the philosophy exam and into the tears of pure disappointment as my bliss gets wrecked by the reality of the english results. That is followed by two hours of crying and comforting words in the phone. I am, like we say in Finland, as if I had sold my country. 

Nevertheless, I eventually get over it and move on to painting with watercolours and dreaming of a beautiful afternoon in a beautiful living room reading magazines. 

photo from Wes Anderson's ingenious The Royal Tenenbaums 

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