Oh, today. I woke up at 7 for some serious Calculus cram-time. But I was feeling really gross and pukey, so I went to sleep for another hour. When I woke up, I was still feeling that way, but I knew I couldn’t lose any more study-time, so I took a shower and spent the next hour alternately bent over my math textbook or bent over a trash can, feeling like I was going to throw up any second. Amount of knowledge retained in this hour: Zero.

Now a few minutes past 9, I emailed my math teacher and TA, asking if I could possibly take the midterm later than evening when I would be more likely to feel better, or the next day. I tried to make myself study about 15 more minutes, then gave up and went back to sleep, setting my alarm for noon. The exam was to be at 1:30.

I woke up feeling mostly better, but still well below average. I crammed for an hour, but my professor still hadn’t emailed me back, so I IMed my TA to find out what was going on. We weren’t able to track him down, so at 1:10, I trudged across campus to the exam room, freaking out about the lack of real studying I’d been able to do and still feeling weak and nauseated, which wasn’t helped by the utterly gross weather. The professor and I worked out that I would take the exam at 4:30 that afternoon, giving me time to start feeling better already and cram some more study-time in.

At 4:10, I was feeling fairly resigned to not doing well on the midterm. The practice midterm I’d been studying was an impossible nightmare, and I wasn’t having much luck with the problems in the book. I was feeling exhausted by the time I got to the building, so I took the seldom-used elevator to the fourth floor. I pushed my button and collapsed against the wall. And my butt hit the big red Emergency Call button. At first I couldn’t figure out where the voice was coming from, but eventually my tired brain wrapped around what had happened and I told the nice lady that I had pushed the button by accident and there was no emergency to report.

Then, the midterm! I was ready to fail spectacularly after such a dramatic day, so I was surprised to find myself kicking butt. I finished the first three questions of a four-question, hour-and-a-half exam in twenty minutes. The fourth question was a lot more challenging and I wasn’t able to solve it, but I got fairly far along in the process, enough for some substantial partial credit. So go me!

Then I went for groceries, because I essentially had nothing but condiments in the fridge, and now I actually have things to eat! And I’m exhausted and I’m going to have to find a time tomorrow to watch Taxi Driver for my film class, as I missed tonight’s screening, but I’m feeling okay! My academic world is going in a bit of a downward spiral, but I’m coping, and I’m at least not going to fail anything.

And now I have pasta and Witches Abroad to read for my fairytales class, and maybe House if I can stay awake until 9.