linkismyhero

Not a lot of comments on my last journal entry. I guess it was too long. Or maybe everybody simultaneously decided I'm a goon.

If you sent me a private message, I didn't get it. My little message icon indicates that I have something in my inbox, but I don't.

I feel pretty relaxed and relieved right now. I have to admit a little shame-facedly that some of the relaxed feeling I'm experiencing is due to having taking a small dose of the tranquilizer I carry with me in the event of a panic attack. While on the second bus to school this morning, I looked at something the wrong way (really, my panic attacks have weird triggers that I don't understand) and I started having a panic attack.

It can be hard to tell if I'm really about to get a panic attack or if the feeling will pass on its own, so I waited until I was off the bus and in the classroom building to take the tranquilizer. I had to go potty, and my panic attack was such that I wanted to wait in my stall for the other girls to leave the bathroom; I usually don't want to be around people when I'm having a panic attack. Then when the coast was clear, I unscrewed my little pill fob (which looks exactly like this), dropped two little yellow pills into my hand, brought out the bottle of water in my backpack (usually I have a Nalgene bottle in my bag, but I had forgotten it this morning, but luckily I had a back-up in the form of a "DrinkMore Water" bottle I got for free at last Wednesday's farmer's market near mom's office), and took the tranquilizer.

The effect is not immediate, so I usually have to suffer through the panic attack for a while before it lifts. Actually, I've often wondered if the tranquilizer has any effect at all, because the time between when I take it and when the panic attack lifts is pretty random. This time, it actually went away much more quickly than usual, which makes me wonder if it would have gone away that quickly without the tranquilizer.

At any rate, the dose I take is very small and doesn't make me groggy or weird, but it does make me feel a little more relaxed than usual.

I mentioned at the beginning that in addition to feeling relaxed, I also feel relieved. This is because I had a midterm on Friday in my algorithms class. I really didn't think I did well at all, and I had talked to the professor prior to the midterm, and he said I had to get a passing grade on the midterm if I am to have any hope of passing the class, because of my poor performance so far. The maximum number of points one could earn on the exam was the standard 100, and my fear was that I had gotten something close to 30.

Today, at the end of lecture, the professor told us that the class median and average of the midterm was 59 points. He said that if you got lower than that, you should consider dropping the course. As he was handing back our blue examination books, I felt very nervous. But, to my surprise and relief, my blue book had a little red "61" in the "grade" box. Much better than I had thought I'd done.

More detailed breakdown of how I did in the spoiler:

At any rate, by no means am I completely in the clear. I will most likely talk to my professor tomorrow to get some tips on the upcoming homework (which I should probably be doing right now ), and I will ask him if my grade is sufficient to pass the course, given my problems with previous assignments. I will probably have to do better on upcoming assignments and quizzes (and, of course, the final) if I am to pass. Hopefully he won't tell me that my bad grades up to now have destroyed my chances of passing.

Anyway, I've made an avocado sandwich for my enjoyment (of which I've already eaten half) so I will eat the rest and start working on the homework. Actually, scratch that; I just finished the sandwich and washed it down with some caffeine-free Coke. NOW I'll work on the homework.