I tried to post the following immediately after class on Thurs., Jan. 21, but I kept getting an error message.
Quote:
I just finished a 90-minute GROUP QUIZ...and I feel like somebody has worked me over with a baseball bat. The instructor is wonderful and very kind, and he has already done all he can to make the group portion of this class, which is very heavily group-oriented, as low-stress as possible for me.
This course is in one of my special interests, and my four teammates are intelligent, friendly, motivated, and easy to get along with. I also think we did really well on the quiz. On the surface, it appears that absolutely nothing is wrong.
However, trying to keep from having a panic attack for an hour and a half has worn me completely out. I am shaking, I have a headache, and I feel like I just ran a marathon. I am so overstimulated right now. I just want to go home and go to sleep, but I have to go to work in about ten minutes. Thank God my new job is a quiet, repetitive, work-on-your-own type of thing.
I know I can do quite well in this class. It's just the psychological cost that is killing me. It is almost physically painful to work in a group for that long with no break, especially in a quiz/test situation. It sucks, because otherwise, I absolutely LOVE the class.
I took half a Xanax before the quiz, and I just took another half a few minutes ago. I have got to get calmed down. I am doing my breathing exercises and writing things out.
Fast forward to today...and we did not do all that well on the quiz. We also had to do a bunch more group work during lecture in the morning and lab in the afternoon. I could not stop shaking in class, and had a bad headache and stomach pains by the time lab got over. I kept the panic attack at bay...just barely. When I got back to my apt., I was so worn out I couldn't do any homework. I did the dishes, and now I am going to be to try to sleep.
I have accommodations from the disability office that state that I am supposed to be taking tests in a private, low-distraction room. Taking a quiz as a group is as far from that as you can get. We also have two reports due later this semester...both of which will be submitted and graded as a group.
This is especially heartbreaking because I looked forward to taking this course for the past two years (I had a uni course catalog when I was still in community college), and we are being taught all this wonderful stuff. I'm not learning the material (which I have been dying to learn for years, BTW), however, because I am so incredibly anxious. I am also blurting out wrong answers and making stupid mistakes on written material, both of which are very uncharacteristic of me. Like I said, the instructor is very nice, but he is also quite firm about his students doing everything as a group because that's what you have to do to be able to succeed in a career after graduation. I guess that means I won't be able to have a successful career.
I am trying to reframe the class as being a "how to learn to be better at appearing NT," and I am trying to have a positive attitude that with enough exposure to group learning, I will eventually become desensitized to it. Anyone who has been reading my previous blogs knows how overwhelming and exhausting and overloading the university experience has been for me already. I was really hoping this semester would be better than the first one.
When I went to bed last night, I was actually hoping that God would make it so that I just wouldn't wake up in the morning. I am currently jumping through a bunch of hoops and red tape trying to get to see a psychiatrist over here in my uni town. Although my regular physician and both of my therapists (here and back home) are the ones wanting me to take my psychotherapy to the next level (and I totally concur), I can't get in to see a psych. until I have been seen by a university GP first. That appt. is Thurs. the 28th.
Oh yeah, and my husband's health problems are continuing. Today, he tried to go to work in spite of not feeling well, changed his mind and decided to head back home, and projectile vomited all over the inside of his truck before he could make it back to the house. Hi smost recent cortisone shot in his back didn't help his recurring pain, either. I am beginning to wonder if the doctors spoke too soon when they called his recovery from his near-fatal car wreck right before school started in August "miraculous."
I would call it quits and head back home right now, if not for 1) all the student loans I have already racked up, and 2) the fact that the professors adore me and adore my work and are extremely optimistic about my chances for success. Literally dozens of people here and back at the comm. college have told me that I have a ton of potential.
I'd like to donate about 50 points of IQ to someone who can actually make use of them. I feel like intellect is certainly wasted on me. What good is it to have a super-powerful engine if you have to drive on four flat tires?
Anyway, is this group work thing survivable, and if so, HOW???
26 Jan 2010, 10:48 pm
