This is the second morning in a row that I have woken up to "A Sorta Fairytale" - Tori Amos playing over and over again in my head. Oh yeah, and even before that the dreams about school started back up again too. In this particular sequence, I was seated with 100 or so other students inside of a large lecture hall. A female teacher, standing out in front and otherwise directing the class, explained that we were about to take a exam on what we had covered over the entire course of the semester. I hadn't read any of the material. My brain was devoid of any references to what all she was talking about and it frightened me. The dream stopped making any further coherent sense after that.
This happens to me before each term begins. I haven't paid exceptionally close attention to when the dreams tend to taper off, but I believe it's sometime after the first week of class. I'm not any more anxious or nervous than usual. This just seems to be the way my mind prepares me anew after an extended break to deal with school work, show up for classes on time as well as prepared, and function according to certain time constraints. In reality, I stay a few steps ahead on my assignments for most, if not all, of my classes. I don't make a habit of skipping (I only missed one class last semester with good reason and the professor's permission). I'm never late, if anything, I am unreasonably early for my first scheduled class of the day. There have been a few occasions when I determined incorrectly that I wouldn't be needing to haul a particular text with me (my backpack only holds so much) when it would have been more helpful for me to have brought it anyway, but otherwise I'm always prepared. I experience the highest degree of difficulty when trying to conform to a schedule. My personal life always seems to suffer terribly. Inevitably, I end up cutting things out that I would much rather not.
I'm now playing Tori Amos MP3s on my machine while I consider further that last line I typed. I'm wondering how long it will be before I'll have to cut back on the number of entries I post to this website on a daily basis. I might not have to resort to that. After all, my priorities have been altered somewhat during this summer off. School obligations are still first and foremost, but staying sane has become a near second. I've been maintaining my mental health by transferring all my competing thoughts to this space. Usually allowing myself to go a little insane is a good tactic for keeping my grades high. I'm going to try another, more relaxed approach this semester and see if I do even better with that.
-- CrystalShiloh @ 12:09 PM