Friday, January 31, 2014

I'm back!

Book Addicts!
It's celebration time for me. Today I had my last exam at college *screams, shouts, and let's it all out*. And until February 10th I have the "mythical" free weeks after finals. I say mythical because I've been four years in college and never once had this mentioned heavenly weeks. For me, it's always been: exam, exam, exam, infinite exam, finish, and the next day new semester!


That's what happens when you're studying chemical engineering. While everyone's partying hard, you're studying. And when everyone is having a beautiful life, you're crying 'cause you have to study. So, yes, I had a couple of awful days. I missed my blog and I miss my books.

(this was me)

Because I missed you so much, I wanted to do a post so you could have a sneak peak of my constant nightmare routine of being a project of an engineer.

Being an engineer is not easy. And being an student who's trying to be one? Well, he/she will suffer. That's for sure...

No matter how hard you try, you're never ever ever ever going to go to an exam without freaking out the previous moments/hours/days. It doesn't matter that you know all your notes by memory and that you have been studying a month for this particular test. If you can't pass through the problem definition, you're gonna fail. And it's not easy to pass that first step.

And probably, in the exam, the teachers will expect you to have absorbed the essence of the subject and know how to solve ANY case, ANY problem. Therefore, the exam will be a problem you've never done before, not in class, not in your house, not ever.

And then you simply cry like a baby 'cause in your house that exercise was easy and you could find the solution: you could have designed a reactor in a blink and calculate de number of phases in that rectification column.

Since you're an engineer and numbers are your "thing" and not letters, when one teacher decides to do a theoretical test, you bring out the J. K. Rowling you have inside and try to use the most difficult words all together to feign you know what you're talking about.

There's always a moment in every class, every year, when a teacher expects you to know things just because he knows them. And you reach that point when you feel beyond stupid.

And you also start to wonder why did you think in your "golden ages" (high school) that the college life was the best stage of life. Advice? Don't watch so many college movies/series.

All you want to do is read books and watch your TV shows, but there's barely time. And you end up dreaming about them.

And don't even think about social life. Those days of hanging out with friends, going to those cool clubs or simply watching a movie are now special events. Those things are overrated. Or so you keep telling yourself that. 

You need someone to cheer you up, since you are banned from your multiple addictions: books, TV Shows and anything more interesting than that pile of notes looking suggestively at you saying "you're gonna die". And you end up watching Doctor Who telling you how awesome you're on repeat:

At the end you're so tired that you end up doing crazy things like singing like a lunatic in the shower or the car while driving (imagine: me singing, out loud, really, really loud, Bohemian Rhapsody doing all the voices), crying internally just thinking about all the work you still have to do and asking your mama for healthy food to counteract the lack of sleep (Wait. What? Did I ate veggies?)

And there's one irrevocable rule: the teacher's never wrong. And if indeed there's something wrong in your notes, you probably decided to bring out your creative side while taking notes and decided to do your own formulas (Pascal's law? That's too old, better I'll use Patri's law). Or it's probably that you wrote the wrong code in the program or that you simply have no idea what you are doing.

When you think that you have nailed an exam, you go to your house with a huge smile on your face and doing a happy dance. You think about the exam, over and over again and think that there's no way you're not gonna have a ten or close to it. Then you see your real score and go all Klaus: "I'm the king of quarter/I can't be killed"

And all you want to do is...

But the most infuriating thing is when people complain about their exams and you think: "witch, I'll do that with my eyes closed". Or when no one understands your pain/suffering and think you're just being dramatic and exaggerating the whole thing.

Having final exams, changes you. You live in a sort of exam-limbo, where time stops and you only study. But when the final finally arrives and you blurt out all your knowledge in four hours, you leave the exam like nothing matters anymore:

When you finish all you want to do is burn all your notes or throw them out of your window, but you know you can't do that 'cause you will need all that pile of written papers also called "my last year notes". Still, a girl can dream.

And, of course, the teachers would plot against you by giving you enough homework to kill you from a stroke and would put all your finals together, 'cause what's the fun of not stressing us out?

But it's all worth it, when people ask you what you're studying and you say: "chemical engineering". Their faces goes all "wow" and they look at you in a mix of admiration and "that-guy/girl-is-crazy". 

You might cry desperately, have nightmares about exams, wake up in the middle of the night not knowing if you have studied enough, hyperventilate as a measure of relax and half the time think you're stupid, but it's all worth it when you say you're studying chemical engineering.

Plus the recovering time is something like this:

First days:

All the other days:

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