Swamped

I'm just done looking at my college's new students website and I admit—I'm scared.

Countless forms, placement tests, questionnaires, declarations... Strange questions like "What do you intend to take advantage of at Carleton?", or "What 5 things should your roommate know about you?". Placement tests for MATH. OMG. Multivariate calculus?!? I can hardly understand some of the terms. A-levels crams you with plenty of knowledge but really no knowledge at all. I don't know the names of the stuff I was learning, the relevance, or any of that grand educational fluff. All I got, formally, was a bagful of tricks to handle the exam questions. Boohoo.

The other day someone asked me about the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation and I had only recently come to know that I had studied it at A-levels, but never known it's name or that it was founded by these 2 clowns. What have I been doing?

Strangely, if I had anyone else ranting this to me, I'd tell them to relax, take it slowly, and enjoy the ride. But here I am, paranoia on overdrive, worrying if I can complete my studies (+ lots of lab) in 3 years, maintain a GPA of 3.8, and still have fun along the way. Maybe it's these ridiculous conditions that are scaring me; I wonder though if they were lifted, I could say, "Screw it, let's just have fun!" Or would that competitive, kiasu, "asian" part of me still rare its ugly head?

At the end of the day, I'll just have to take my own advice. What else can I do anyway? But there's nothing like a good rant to put things in perspective and perhaps, one day someone out there might chance upon this and find it useful. Or I might come back and laugh at my unfounded fears.

OR I might come back from the devastation of horrible results and say, "I knew it from the start!"......

Damn. No wonder pot-smoking is on the rise. Paranoid is a tough beast to slay. Heh.