Feeling a little terrified today-each day I get closer to this confounded test, the more tension I feel.

A little re-direction always helps....

"When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you're going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce."

-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

This is a quote from "Life's Little Instruction Book" by the author above. There are several editions of this book, which was essentially a litany of 'pearls of wisdom' from the author to his son as he was about to leave home for college. What began as a few dozen suggestions transformed into thousands of mantras for living the most 'whole' life. I highly recommend these books, especially if you are in a challenging transitional stage in life like myself. They will offer insights and humor, and may just be the prompt for a change in the pattern of thinking, feeling or behaving that could help clear the confusion.

Procrastination

I've always prided myself upon being well-prepared for anything. Here I am approximately 12 days away from taking the largest standardized test I've ever faced in order to be an acceptable graduate student. I started the preparatory process in January and have had punctuations of dilligent study amidst light, drawn out studying. Now I am coming down to the wire and having marked trouble motivating myself to spend several hours a day reading over the thick study guide I fashioned from hundreds of pages of texts. I want to do this once and do it right...but am I already too late? Can I really fill in the remaining gaps in 11 days and a handful of hours? I suppose this is one of those 'put up or shut up' moments,' which means I have to get my ass to work....