the dog days are over

 

i guess it's high time i gathered myself and finally started writing again. 

on the 22nd i did pass the state exam, and i got a 3. but then afterwards, just as i usually do after the really big moments in life, i felt so disappointed and empty. it's not about the grade itself, though. i could never really care about my grades, i have never been the goodie-two-shoes straight-As student who goes nuts when she gets a B. i simply refuse to be evaluated on a crappy 1 to 5 scale in an educational system where one means i am a total failure and utterly inadequate, and five means i am excellent and rock the world. i mean, seriously? how can we let bloody numbers define our adequacy??? 

nevertheless, it's pretty hard when you are the only fish in the river trying to swim against the tide, when you are surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of overachievers to whom even a four is a disappointment. there isn't too much of a chance to resist the feeling of being an utter disappointment, is there?

so i let the feeling of being a disappointment and being completely inadequate wash over me after the state exam. i rushed home, kinda fell apart, questioned my entire existence and adequacy to succeed in life, saw myself as a total failure, licked my wounds for a few days. and never, not even for a mere second, have i appreciated my finishing university and earning a degree. i guess i am the kinda gal who appreciates only the little things, and never the big ones. maybe i suck at seeing the entire, big picture.

anyway, my point is, that i wasn't disappointed with the grade itself that i got, but my performance. the performance was, indeed, a disappointment & failure. picked crappy topics, got a bitchy opponent to whom no answer was good enough, i froze, i could hardly put proper english sentences together. there were loooong awkward periods of silence during the exam. i could not gather my thoughts, i fell apart, i failed to answer the answers. during one of those long awkward pauses i was actually thinking about just getting up and leaving the entire exam without saying a word. in the next moment i was thinking what a shame it was that i hadn't had my polaroid camera with me, i could have snapped a polaroid photo of the line of people sitting opposite me, looking incredibly bored, clearly bored out of their genius minds, totally wanting to be somewhere else, anywhere but there, examining us retarted bastards, trying to put our hands on a bloody degree. like a crappy ba degree worth any-flippin'-thing. i guess it will take me quite some time to forget those bored, disdainful, haughty, disappointed looks they keept shooting at me. 

then, in the end, they did let me go, with the grade that's the most average of the avarages, and i left feeling the most average i had ever felt. yet, the reason why i felt really bad is because i know i am better than this. i am better than average. i am so much better than what i showed there, that day, during those awful twenty minutes. i know so much more than what came out that day. there was so much left in that should have come out, but never did.

still, life goes on, and i am slowly gathering myself, starting to think about the future, trying to figure out what i should do next. as i got more time to think, quarter-life-panic has hit me again, and i am struggling to decide whether i should study for another two years and earn an ma degree (in case i got accepted), or i should finally start the so-called adult life, find a flat, or at least a room of my own, move out of the dorm, find a proper full-time job, start working and make a living. then, i am also beginning to enjoy my freedom, a tiny bit more every day, and thinking about the things i had to postpone because of this hectic last semester of mine and all that craziness, worrying, and freaking out it entailed. i may even write a nice little long list about what i will do this summer, all the things i have been wanting to do for months but never had the time. i probably won't do half of them, but at least i have the possibility and the opportunity to do so. 

i will stop feeling like a disappointment, pick my self up, dust my self off, and enjoy my summer of freedom. i will go to places, i will see things, i will read and write my heart out. i will blog about whatever pops into my head. i will get creative again. i will take a thousand photos of a hundred sunsets and a hundred sunrises.  i will hit the road and visit my friends here and there in the country. i will roam the streets of budapest day and night. i will bath myself in balmy starry summer nights and crispy dawns. i will paint with waterpaint, i will draw immature childish pictures, use all of my color pencils, and glue things together, decoupage every bare surface i find, and finally make a scrapbook, 'cause i have been putting it off for years, literally. i will lay in the greenest of grasses, read the softest of paperbacks, write with ink colored every single shade of the rainbow, scribble until i fill every single line of the pretty pink pages of my brand new notebook, hop on my bike at the end of the day, ride down to the brink of the village, race the sunset, and try to catch the last colorful beams of the descending sun. take a photo of it. or two. or a thousand.

so let the good times roll. 

(and fuck the hungarian higher education system)