'doing my best'

If you know me in real life, you might've already noticed that I seem incredibly calm, even before major assessments. By calm, I mean not expressing my nervousness much, and casually fidgeting around with my iPad. Indeed I'm rather calm and collected before tests and exams, but it really isn't like that, you see.

I spend hours and hours per day worrying about stuff. I definitely haven't given up on academics, so I still have the desire to perform well. To most people, the path to possibly better marks might be simply to study more and memorize more, but to me, it's not exactly that easy. I normally end up spending 90% of my time worrying (or even crying), thinking about how I could possibly not fail a test.

And you may say, "how will Sisley even fail things?" It's true that I haven't failed a single thing yet, but the fear is real. Often, this fear, that practically came out of nowhere, haunts me so much I can't even perform at basic standard.

Take math as an example. I might not feel the nervousness in me at first, but towards the middle of the common test, it starts to emerge and reveal itself. Towards the end, I might as well have an internal breakdown and become unable to calculate basic, simple stuff. This happened today. I wasn't aware of the feelings of fear buried inside myself. I thought I'd be perfectly fine, but I ended up rushing everything and getting nothing done. Without knowing how to do a single question, I'd hastily skip it. With the questions I skipped, I became more and more doubtful of my abilities.

And the problems don't stop here. Problems force me to rethink my goals in life. To be honest, I still hope to get a scholarship again, and that has been pulling me back terribly. I'm pressurized to perform well because I need great marks to choose my desired subjects, and that's another reason why I can't perform as well as I normally can. My mom always tells me to work hard, but it isn't directly correlated anymore. I've lost the ability to simply do my best in things; I always end up overthinking stuff.

Right now, I'm still blaming myself over my terrible performance in the common test, but what's more destructing is my fear. I do have to be proud of myself for being much less afraid than I used to be before, but my fear still has a significant, negative impact on my life. Indeed, everyone shares my fears during major exams, but unlike mine, theirs won't affect them as much as mine does. I can't work properly without feeling good about myself, and that's the one thing that destroys my chances.

Over time, I've learnt to be fine about failing to do things beyond my abilities, but I hate underperforming. With my ability, I could get satisfactory results, but my own fear has slowly consumed all of my confidence. To put it simply, I took away all of my success. I made things difficult for myself.

And the thing is, I can't really do anything about it. It isn't my all-time-low, but this period in particular, I'm starting to realize the reality of planning for the future. 

I'm still learning how to cope with it, wish me luck.