#college rant

There's no polite way to say this: I think I've really thrown my back out. They had me standing for 30 to 40 minutes straight. After a while, I began to feel really sore. But I wasn't sure if it was safe to sit down. So I beared with the pain, and now I'm really regretting it. I can't focus except to sit down and rest my back. And I know I'm supposed to be helping my dad with the classwork, but I'm too tired to do so. Besides, I also seem to have stomach pains or something. My stomach feels all gurgly or something. I don't know if it's empty or hungry or stressed or what, but I do know that I don't feel great. I don't feel great and yet class isn't even halfway done yet.

Oh, and the assignment this week and next week is horrifying to me. Taking pictures of glass bottles, in collaboration with the creative design students. That's combining two things I don't like: group assignments and working with fragile objects. I'm constantly scared of breaking something when I'm working with delicate implements, and so an assignment involving direct contact with fragile glass objects…that is horrifying for me. It's practically my idea of a nightmare. Especially when you add in group work. The group work takes an already bad thing and makes it a little bit worse.

Before High School ended, I think I was improving on my group work skills. I'd taken social skills classes online, and I was able to mumble some sentences to other students in groups. I'd learned some amount of social tolerance. But leaving a familiar environment and entering something unfamiliar has basically reset all the progress I was making. I think it's reset all my progress, anyways. Because the idea of this group project thing is actively making me feel nervous. I don't like any of this. Group work, fragile objects and more. Is there really anything worse than this? I don't know if there is.

It's noisy in these photography studios. It's echoey like an auditorium and the other kids are talking a lot. That's beginning to get to me. These kids are so fucking loud! I'm this close to a meltdown over it. I swear I heard someone scream "woo!" It's horrible. It's impossible to feel good in these conditions. It's also rough because my back is still somewhat sore, probably because I was standing straight up for so long. I feel like one of my socks or shoes is prickling me too. So that's bugging me when I try to walk. And finally, there's the weird stomach I still seem to have. That's bugging me too. So yeah, I'm not having a great time today.

I'm gaseous too. Did I mention that? I feel kind of gassy, and I feel itchy in that area of the body. I don't know if I actually have food that desperately needs to come out, or if I have blood trying to get out. Either way, I kind of feel like I may need to go bathroom. And even if it is hypochondria (as it very well may be) this feeling still isn't leaving me to feel very good. I keep having panic attacks over the noise from the other kids. My stomach feels dumb, my back feels worse, and ahh! That was because the noises just made me actually yell in real life! I'm easily startled sometimes, and I'm not having a good day today. I want to go home really, really badly. I don't like this. I'm gassy, my stomach hurts, I'm having panic attacks, my back hurts, etc.

I think me and my dad are gonna have to leave early. We rushed through one of these photography stations online, and the others aren't done yet. So we can't move on, and I just have to stay hanging around with stress and paranoia making me unable to focus. I feel bad, because the teacher for this class is nice. But the actual course curriculum is awful. The teacher was kind enough to let me go sit upstairs for a while to call down. I'm glad she's letting me do that. It might help me out some. My foot is feeling sore now, too. So it's good to get a chance to rest it. It's my right foot that's uncomfortable, and I don't really know why it's sore. But it is, and now that's on my plate too. Still, I'll try to stay calm. I'll just sit down, take a phone break and try to rest my mind. I don't know if it'll work, but we'll see.

I can't focus to do that, actually. I can do deep breathing, and it can call me down some. But I'm much too permanently on edge to ever too meditation. I'm too sensorally aware of everything, so I'm almost always tense or on edge about something. Even if I relax, I can't fully clear my mind. Because I'll just replace my worries with a one note thought to breathe. Or I'll get distracted by other things I feel. But I'll be okay.

My dad brought me back downstairs. I still don't feel great. My nerves haven't recovered enough for all that. But I should hopefully be able to hold myself together for the final two stations here. That's really all I want for now. I just want to get through these stations so we can leave school and begin heading home. I'm nervous about the group project with the visual design kids next week too of course. But that can wait to be discussed until I'm at least back home. For now, I'm just gonna try to focus on keeping myself calm and steady.

Well, I will keep focusing on that. I just finished my second station, but I want a minute to complain about one final thing. I can't access the College's internet. I don't why I can't, because I could access it daily in the first few weeks. And other kids still seem able to get internet just fine. But I can't get any. So I can only write to distract myself from my stress (or to revel in the stress, as sometimes the case may be). I feel inclined to say that I can't make the internet connect because I have a phone from 2019, and the world refuses to accomodate me and my 7 year old phone. If that's true, it'll only increase my frustrations and depression over the passage of time. But I'm on my third station now, I'm close to being home, and the kids are stressing me out with their noise again. So before I can write something about my congestion or whatever it is I want to write about, I think I'm just gonna put the phone away so I can try to relax.

I learned how data works, finally. Only today did I learn that data gets you access to public Internet, but presumably only in areas where public internet already exists. Because I can't access the College's internet. But I turned data on and I was suddenly able to look things up. So I figure data must only work to bring you internet if you have no internet and yet are in a place where internet is. I hope that's actually how it works. Because otherwise I still don't understand it at all.

Well, I just got home from the College a bit ago. I'm now laying down upstairs. But I'm using headphones again, and I'm not listening to music quietly with my phone's case on it. I keep feeling guilty about that. I used to be capable of staying upstairs and listening to music without headphones. But now I'm incapable of that. I feel bad because of it all, but I don't really know how to fix it. I'm gonna keep the headphones on for now, but I'm gonna continue feeling guilty. And thereby my stress will probably continue, I guess.

Because huhuhuuuu my mom, she wants me to experience the uni life even if it meant going to a course I FUCKING HATE, IT SOUNDS SO BORING like no offense, I know it’s probably hard to manage people BUT THAT’S EXACTLY THE REASON WHY I DON’T WANNA GO THERE eighhhhhuuhhhh

On a love-hate relationship with biology 😭

Ik I'm in uni. But like.. college applications are fucking insane to think about. They expect so much from teens. And I'm saying this because I distinctly remember having this conversation with a friend. We were discussing our college essays-- particularly the lack of a subject to talk about.

The lack of any hardships that were "bad enough" to talk about in an essay. I remember saying how I "wouldn't mind a near death experience, cause atleast it'll make for a really good college essay" and she agreed. Most, if not all, of my friends agreed.

They'd agree to be in harms way to get into a good college.

This was a conversation I had at 14. My friends were 14-16.

These are teenagers. This is insane expectations put upon them. And this is an completely self destructive line of reasoning that most students have-- even in uni. In jobs. In life.