Four-Letter Word Angst

It occurs to me that this is the first exam period of my life that this blog has so far encountered. So I thought maybe I should explain some stuff, or just think it through more carefully than usual and exorcise the whole thing here before it even starts up properly.

I'm not good at exams. I don't do them very well. It's the bit where you have to answer the questions that gets me every time.

I'm actually a bit worried. Not about the exams, it's not worth getting worried about them, as I actually find it very difficult to connect myself to them. I spent several years doing ridiculously well in exams, so well that the results always just seemed to be something that happened, rather than actually anything to do with me. And if exams are just a tiny, inaccurate reflection of some warped part of me that I don't even acknowledge, how can I possibly be expected to be concerned about what might be seen in them?

What I'm worried about is their effect upon my life and happy-bunny mental state. Will I get depressed, even as I obstinately declare they mean nothing to me? Logically, rationally, I really don't care all that much. I don't know why I still end up upset every now and again. I should probably just get over myself, but I don't know what I'd do without my bravado to cling to. It would be terrible to actually care about these things and then have to deal with how awful I'm going to do in them.

I tend to get irreverent and silly more than depressed, however, which I believe to be tragic in its own way.

If this turns me into even more of a spoilt denial-ridden brat than usual, I apologise before hand. There's a part of me that remains overwhelmingly bitter over just how much my priceless education has dominated and perverted my life. I have far-reaching psychological scars thanks to society's need to market every conceivable facet of a person.

Far-reaching psychological scars, I tell you. My personality's been seriously trashed by this tyrannical education thing.

To be perfectly honest, it makes me feel dirty. Like some whore for intellect. I let whoever got in line first stuff whatever information or techniques they like into my mind on the offchance that I might some day get some money for it. I sell my mind out to strangers, examiners, examination board members and Lord knows who else. I'm just some kind of temporary recepticle for whatever happens to be in this year's textbooks.

Part of me wonders why we automatically assume selling one's body is so much worse than this. If there's such a thing as a soul, then surely one's mind is closer to it than such a fickle thing as flesh. And selling one's soul... well, pop-culture tells us just how wonderfully that always turns out.

At the end of exam time I feel used and discarded and bad. It's the final testing that caps the insult. It's bad enough that they cram my head full of all this information they deem important, but then they have the audacity to poke and prod at me in order to see what I remember. But they don't really care if I remember in the long run, they just want to see if I can. They just want to see if I survived their information implantation, as if my mind is some factory product, and maybe if it's good enough it'll be moved further down the conveyor belt to be tossed to some stray employer.

This is what I meant when I mentioned "depressed." I have a sneaking suspicion it might also be "spoilt brat" material too. I'm blaming it on the psychological scars, and as for the depression, I'd like it to go away. Now, please.