GAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!

"This year. This year's gonna be different."

At least that's what I tell myself every september when school starts. I vow to myself to break the cycle of last-minute cramming, procrastination and all-nighters. No more caffeine-reliance! No more napping in class! No more borrowing Kristen's notes cus I slept in!

Well, I was doing pretty good even i am horribly addicted to caffeine and aside from my bout with sinusitis and the horrible malaria/flu/pink-eye, I hadn't missed any class at all this year. Nonetheless, last Thursday night saw me cramped up in my little room frantically trying to get through my large animal medicine notes at least once.

The stupid thing was that I'd stayed late at school practically every day that week studying and I hadn't even made a dent in my notes. I had a good two inches of material to get through and in four days of intensive seven hour study sessions, I'd only managed to make it through about 1cm.

So there I was. 4:30am before my exam and I'd finally gone through my notes . . . once.

I turned off my bedside lamp and tried to close my eyes and get at least two hours of sleep before my exam which was in exactly three and a half hours.

Every time I closed my eyes though, I'd think of something else I had to look up. "What's Maedi-visna disease? I know it affects sheep. I just have to look up what it is." and then I'd turn on my light and look it up. Satisfied, I'd shut my light off and try to sleep again.

Two seconds later, I'd sit up and began looking up when in gestation a cow infected with bovine viral disease would produce a persistently infected animal. "Ok. If the cow's pregnant and her fetus gets infected at 100-120 days, it becomes a PI calf. Alright."

And then I'd repeat the cycle again with Malignant Catarrhal Fever, Winter Dysentery and BSE.

I got to school the next morning and was a total wreck. Everyone else looked pretty worse for wear as well. Heather sat down beside me and stared off into space, her touque and mittens still on. I broked out of my zoned state enough to ask her,"How's it going there?"

"Woke up at 3am to study this morning." she croaked.

"Hey, I was still up at that time!" I responded, 30 seconds later.

Sarah walked in with a glazed over expression on her face at exactly 7:59am.

A minute later, we started the exam.

Fifty minutes later, I handed in my exam and felt like crying. All my hard work and none of it had paid off. I sat dejectedly at my desk and patiently waited for everyone else to finish writing the exam.

Sarah, also done her exam early, leaned over and whispered a "What did you think of that?"
"It sucked." I said and sat there trying not to tear up.
She seemed relieved. "I think I only got 40% on that. That totally sucked!" she said.

Weirdly enough, it was nice knowing I wasn't hte only one. At 9am, the classroom erupted into a chorus of disdain and outrage at the unfair and ridiculous exam that we had just been given.

We sat through another 3 hours of lecture after that and I ran across campus and was very very tempted to order the entire beer menu at the on-campus bar.

So that was the morning. That evening, in my post-exam/sleep deprivation muddle-headedness, I ended up getting into car accident. It was a minor fender-bender in which I totally missed the fact that the car ahead of me was stopped and I frantically braked but hit a patch of ice and slid right into their bumper.

My first accident in which I was the party at fault. I suppose it had to happen sometime. A walk in the park compared to skidding off a crazy cliff on Vancouver island, let me tell you.

I'm more pissed off than anything. Pissed off at myself and pissed off that I have to go through the whole saskatcehwan insurance thing again. Boo-urns. It took a year to get my car fixed last time. A YEAR.

Despite all the crap and poopiness, my day ended nicely as I was on my way to go climbing when I got in my accident. I managed to make it to the climbing gym and had oodles of fun bouldering and trying to follow all the fluorescent pink tape marks on the wall. There's also this one cool route where you start by standing in a door way and literally leaping about two metres ahead to where this handle is sticking out of the wall. And then you start to climb upwards. Very very cool. Naturally, it being like the fourth time I've ever climbed in my life, I missed the handle when I leapt from the doorway. It wasn't pretty. Thank goodness for poofy floor mats!

I also sang in our church's Christmas music choir concert thing this last Sunday. The choir was great cus the pastor's wife was standing beside me and she doesn't sing. She shouts. In the wrong key. And I had to share her music sheets cus I was missing some of the sheet music and she doesn't only shout- she dances. So I nearly horked up my coffee cus I was so motion sick from looking at her sheet music. Fun times.

There was also a performance by the little preschoolers (ages 2-3) and they all had to dress up in these little sheep costumes and it was so cute I nearly peed myself. One of the kids was totally into it and kept elbowing the kid beside her but he would not be moved. he stood there in his sheep costume resolutely staring out at the crowd and glaring. Then another one started running up to the speakers and sticking his head into them and the teacher had to come and drag him off the stage and another just stood there twirling around.

They had to do actions for their song and they had to shake their heads around at one point and the little sheep ears on their costumes flopped around and got stuck sticking straight up and it was totally priceless and OH MY GOSH AM I OOGLING OVER KIDS?!!!!!

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Whoa. Felt my uterus quivering there for two seconds. Yeesh!

OK. Enough banter. Must go cram for my other four finals. CAn you believe that I'm not done classes till this Friday and then my finals are on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week?

And my lab final is tomorrow morning?!!! And my final on Tuesday is worth 50% of my mark and I have about 500 pages (I'm not exagerrating) to study for it? And it's all cumulative?! Not to mention all the stuff I have to study for the Monday exam and the Tuesday exam? They told us that from here on in, vet school is all cumulative.

This is so wrong.

And I'm not done my Christmas shopping yet but I'm out of money and I'm steadily gaining weight again and I'm breaking out and, just, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!