Stuck between two words: reality and dreams

My apologies if it is a wordy post. I am penning this post in a state of exhaustion and finding relevant images from my picture albums and public libraries will definitely leave me asleep on the keyboard.

What in the world? It's already the middle of May?

Okay, I really need to learn to balance the blog with the massive loads of assignments that I have on my plate now. It's 1:09am on a Tuesday but I don't feel like sleeping even though I have to wake up at 8am for the morning exercise in Bukit Kiara. Yes, I hate waking up early for exercising yet I still do it because of Mama Carrie and it's a form of stress reliever. Looking at the beautiful flowers and trees as we tread the tarred road always takes my mind off work, even if only temporary.

It's just that the ISUs have arrived one after another and I am minimizing on my sleeping hours, which will both infuriate and shock the hell out of my Law and English lecturers. The last thing they want for me is to drop dead in class again. My English lecturer hasn't seen it but seeing that my Law lecturer is the same chap who taught me World Issues last semester, he has some knowledge of it. I know that I may have promised myself that I would work really hard for the final semester after taking much time out last semester to the point that there were time management issues, which I am handling now.

The thing is it is coming at the expense of my social life. While my peers are out hanging about with their friends during the weekends or after college, I am either rushing home or throwing myself in nothing but work and revisions, making sure that all of the assignments are perfectly completed or at least drafted before calling it a night. Not that I am complaining, anyway. I am never the nerd that mi amigo or Joseph is; it's just that I am determined and being shoved to achieve a higher goal, leading me to explore territories foreign to me, such as staying up until 4 am for a Law debate and/or skipping meals when I should be nourishing myself with nutritious food.

Hmmm, no wonder my calves are cramping.

Last week's English & Drama Festival is the best example that I can relate. For the fortnight leading up to the festival, I was pulling 6- 7 hours of intermittent sleep. Throw into the mix is the Law ISU, which is the mock trial preparation and case analysis. Between acing that and planning the entire skit with Carol, have no idea how I survived without collapsing. Only those closest to me were aware that I was multitasking Law ISU with the creation of "Injustice Served" (an original skit that my group and I created, which has its relevance to William Shakespeare's Hamlet, for English).

I'll see if I can have the video uploaded on YouTube; it's a large 9 minute file, mind you.
With that being said, I lashed out at another classmate during the rehearsal in stress-infused anger because he kept distracting my group member. All of us wanted a perfect execution of the skit and to at least stick to the original meaning of our allocated lines. I was under so much pressure to score because it was my fault that our class performance was screwed and needed to make sure that my group members were able to boost their scores.

Guang Wei suspected that something was amiss after our class performance, which was an opportunity for Ms. Skura to grade us in the event that we couldn't bring our skit to the festival, and asked if I was alright. At first, I lied that I was but when I returned home from college that day, I blared the entire truth (and if you're wondering, yes, everything include Papa Carrie's retreat) through the use of Whatsapp, which led me to soil my phone screen with tears.

Meeting the batch of classmates/friends that I now have, including Guang Wei, Chester, Carol, Charmaine, Meyshna and the never-ending list continues, has definitely made the final semester a much more interesting one. I couldn't have asked for a better group. Over the course of the last 5 months or so, we have grown closer from classmates and mere acquaintances to friends who are there for each other in times of need.

Gosh, that reminds me of the times I ranted on him and Carol. If you two are reading this, I want to say thank you. Wait, I should probably pen a post dedicated to all of them before graduation and have them read it like what I did for Angeline's farewell.

I wouldn't mind taking memorable pictures with them at prom night and freezing the times we shared digitally, though. Imagine the notion of us all suited up in tuxedos and gowns in front of the camera.... man, that's already bringing a smile to my face after such an intense college day.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that last semester was a total pain in the butt because it wasn't but there are certain things I wished it never happened. One of which was my constant battle with sleep deprivation-induced headaches. It wasn't until I was reading the messages that my peers have written on my yearbook that I realized that the stress is leaking out on my face. The messages are all in the lines of advising me to take five and not to spend too much time glued on the assignments as well as to smell the roses, enjoying what life has to offer because, well, you only live once.

Yet, I have changed this semester. No longer am I the friendly, outgoing and carefree lass, I am slightly reserved (and always preferring to hide in one of my favorite haunts, if I may add) with my emotions, suppressing it to paint a smile. I am definitely concealing my innermost thoughts and fears/worries well because not many people have realized it. It's odd how I am worried of my friends when I don't want them to be worried of me not even the slightest bit, don't you think? However, only two people know the accumulation of events that turned a loquacious person into a reticent writer and that's because I was nudged to be clean about it through the films of tears when they noticed the gradual changes in me.

Sigh, it's time for me to hit the sack. *yawns* Even though I spent 5 hours completing the homework for English, I still need to revise for tomorrow's Unit 3 Law test and have my vision for Media Arts ISU recording drawn, typed or written out.