The Waiting Room

I had a major meltdown yesterday.

I've been studying rather intensely for the GRE. The last few days, in particular, were filled with drilling down the concepts for the quantitative section. I was making up for lost time, since my plans for preparing over the summer were a huge fail.  Math was never my forte, so Husband, who is quite the math guru, provided assistance by tutoring me. Everything seemed to be going well. I had made significant progress. But last night, I was somehow getting problems correct, but there were some minor calculation errors. Suddenly, I could not understand why things were wrong. Nothing seemed to make sense. Despite Husband's efforts to calm me and let me know that everything was OK, I fell apart.

I ran out of the room, locked myself in the bedroom and cried my eyes out.

Husband tried to follow me, but he thought it was best to let me be for a while. After an hour he knocked on the door and I was composed enough to talk about it. I was seriously contemplating not taking the test, even forgoing the PhD thing completely. I was feeling helpless, lost and even too stupid.

After talking it through, which included some more tears, I think my meltdown was a combination of information overload, my frustration/depression over stuff from the summer and my past issues with math, which have nothing to do with the concept of math, but with my experiences with being taught. We both agreed that I just need to quit studying for now and let all the information sink in and marinate. Perhaps, I needed to release of a lot of things...that's what the crying was about.

As I write this, it is super foggy outside. It's like pea soup. It's how I feel right now.

Today, I need to focus on myself and wait for the fog to lift.