Oh right… I can use this thing to actually blog.

I am finally ahead of the game in terms of homework and exams. I had an exam today in Psych 1100. Sixty multiple choice questions, tooks me 40 minutes. That’s 40 seconds per question. Sounds about right.

I was the first to finish. Not the first time that has happened to me. I tend to do exams in a blaze of activity, all neurons firing. It’s what works for me, or at least, what has worked for me in the past.

As always, when I finish first, it either means I am absolutely brilliant or that I have no idea what the fuck I am doing. Usually, the answers is somewhere in between, but most of the time, it’s a lot closer to the brilliant end of the spectrum. When I do an exam, I am quite thoroughly mentally activated, and I have a lot of mental to activate.

I am sure I got some wrong, and there will be some where I can say “Geez, if I had only thought about if for a second… ” instead of blazing through the thing like wildfire, but I am confident that my grade will be good, if not necessarily great.

That’s just how I roll.

Of course, I could be wrong. I am prepared to find out that I have been wildly overconfident and really need to get my shit together and knuckle down. That would, in a way, be a relief. I have been looking for schoolwork that truly challenged me for a long ol time now, and it would be good to know I had found it and I had to truly up my game instead of coasting on native intelligence and a high degree of test brightness.

I just Googled “test brightness” and all I got was stuff about calibrating your monitor. Apparently it’s not a “thing”. I don’t know what else to call it. I’m really good at tests, whatever you want to call it.

The shape of the question implies the shape of the answer. And other mystic bullshit.

Of course, I am operating at a considerable handicap, namely that I don’t have the text yet. From that point of view, passing the test at all seems pretty impressive. And there is no doubt in my mind that I passed.

I realized today that I possibly could have told my professors about my whole problem with lack of ID and all the consequences thereof, and I might get some leniency. I don’t have to rely on my innate cleverness so much. I am sure the professors would understand that I am the victim of forces outside my control.

But I am just too damned proud to do it. I would rather scramble to keep up and take whatever lumps that entails than throw myself on the mercy of the court and beg for scraps. I guess to admit my problems to my teachers would mean admitting weakness to people whose approval means a lot to me (even though I sort of suck at getting it) and I would rather maintain the illusion that I a competent and capable, as opposed to the stumbling fool I tend to be.

People like me should really have handlers. People to keep us materially organized so we can be all dazzling and amazing in the world, and the fact that we are helpless hothouse flowers who are only good at blooming is kept relatively secret.

So for now, I just do my best to stay calm (not easy) and remember that some time soonish, this will all be over and I will be on the other side of it and this tension about identification will be something I laugh and shake my head about.

Otherwise, things have been medium groovy. I had my exam for Psych 1200 last Tuesday. Totally unprepared. Had no idea we had an exam that day. But I was all frontin like I had it all down. Guy next to me said “So, are you ready?” and I was all like “Sure, no problem. Got it cold. ”

So I suppose it would be extra embarrassing if I got a bad grade on that one. Luckily, I don’t think that way.

What intrigues me about that experience is how naturally I defended myself like that. I didn’t think about it, or stumble over myself, or create any sort of weird awkward tension. It was almost effortless.

And that’s happening more and more lately. I feel like I have lost some large piece of the filtering process between my emotions and reality has been removed, and I am super stoked about it.

I am stoked about it because it means I can be a more natural person now. I have reacted without thinking a bunch of times now, and it has worked out fine. I have proof that I don’t need to subject every impulse to a rationalist Inquisition. It means that sometimes, it is fine to just go with my gut, and leave the rational machinery for the big tasks.

It means I can be a lot more real.

I’m not out of the woods yet, and I doubt I ever will be. I always always be a very thinky kind of person, and that’s one of my strengths. Better one well considered wise move than a hundred random stabs. I will always be contemplative and thoughtful and I will never be a realtime field genius.

But being able to trust that I can say and do the right thing without thinking it to within and inch of its life would go a long, long way towards me being comfortable in my skin and relaxed about life, as opposed to living every waking moment in a state of paranoia, trying to anticipate everything because that’s the only way you can feel safe.

It feels like real, deep down, long lasting progress. A big chunk of ice has been removed from the clog caught in the throat of my soul, and I really hope this is just the beginning.

I might actually become sane.

Scary, isn’t it?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.