Results tomorrow
I’ve been following a strict routine of not thinking about this year’s exams between sitting them and getting the results, which will be tomorrow morning for the latter. It’s been successful – until the past twenty-four hours or so, I’ve managed to not worry about something I can’t affect, and I haven’t been concerned in the way friends have. This seems to indicate that I haven’t had any reason to worry, because I haven’t been entirely blanking the thoughts out of my mind (I wouldn’t be capable of that).
However, last night I had a dream about getting my results. I had the envelope, but – presumably because my brain didn’t know what to expect in the envelope and thus was avoiding showing me – I wasn’t opening it. Instead, I was behind the library desk at school and appeared to be organising envelopes for other people. How odd that my subconcious would have me doing this, and in the library of all places. Also, a friend was nearby, and they had just got a B in Philosophy, the subject I am most concerned about, which I presume was a bad omen for me as the friend is of similar ability and did similar amounts of revision to me, and we were all at a disadvantage because of doing the subject in so few hours. I woke up from this in the dark with a sickly, fearful tummy ache feeling rather scared. This isn’t usual Sean-like behaviour surrounding exam results.
The fact is that at present, whatever else I claim, exam results and the accompanying university that I want to go to are very much my ultimate goal in life at the moment, as they are the first hurdle to pass to get there. I’ve been struggling to feel purposeful with anything not related to this over this summer holiday, e.g. Wikipedia activities. This focus is somewhat ridiculous. It is not true that I have failed entirely if I don’t succeed in these areas – but while I like to tell myself that I fail to convince myself of it. I blab on that I am content to search for meaning through thought and debate and writings like this blog but really, if I don’t get what I want tomorrow or I don’t get into the university I want to go to or both (results tomorrow can be made up over the next year if they are not too bad so the two are not totally dependent on each other), I will feel like I’ve completely failed and it was all a waste of time. I won’t be able to convince myself that what I have gained this year in terms of expanding my mind is more important than the grades. I know this because of what it felt like after I got my GCSE results and got an A in History where I wanted an A*. And that’s really sad.
So I’m going to try and stop thinking now (wow) because it’s unlikely to go very far, and I’m going to wish friends good luck for tomorrow and go and watch some TV, and go to bed. We’ll see what happens with that brown envelope tomorrow.