University Days: Season Two

Secret Understudy

Sarah

I've always had bad class anxiety.

The way it was possible for me to get called on.., assigned a big presentation, stuck in group work, or just my general social anxiety getting the best of me, it was all enough to send me throwing up with nerves.

Usually, I was lucky enough to have my annoying twin sister in those classes, so it was manageable.

Usually.

I'd never tell her how much I appreciated her annoying presence, I didn't need to inflate her unhealthily confident ego. Still, I was aware of how nice it was to have her around to make things less scary. Emily would whisper or subtly write down answers in front of me when I got called on, make sure we were grouped together, and be the familiar, safe person to practice presentation with and focus on in the crowd when it came time for those nasty presentations.

Imagine how I felt when we couldn't get the same Spanish class this semester.

I'd begged her to try to get on the waitlist for the class, but Quinn was in the class with the last open spot. Of course, she picked her best friend rather than chance it on the waitlist with her socially devastating sister. There were actually quite a few classes this semester we didn't get together. I might've cried myself to sleep the night before the first day.

So let's just say this Spanish class (the one I was taking on my own) was spooking the living heck out of me. Especially when it came to the first presentation. I had a three-page passage to memorize, and my idiot self procrastinated. HUGE surprise, right?

I had the rest of the afternoon to memorize a three-page passage in Spanish. This was awful for many reasons.

One, I could not memorize things to save my life, even when I was calm.

Two, I seriously doubted I would be calm in that class without anyone familiar in there. It wasn't like Emily was going to be there to try pep-talking or calming me down before the presentation, or like I could focus on her while I was giving the darn presentation.

Three... Did I even need a third reason?!

Anyway, it was around eight in the afternoon when I finished all my other work. That gave me the rest of the night to memorize three pages. Surely enough, it would be okay if I pulled an all-nighter, I figured.

So I started with my paragraph method. The way it worked was that I'd start with one paragraph, re-reading it in my head over and over. Then, I'd close my eyes and try to remember the first few lines from memory. It was a mental recitation.

It was very ineffective.

Not to mention, it wasn't like poetry or a song where I could catch a flow and help the words stick to my brain just a little better. No, of course not. It was like trying to tape a sheet of metal to a tree. Every paragraph was another sheet of metal I couldn't tape to the tree that was my brain.

I barely understood what it was I was memorizing. I didn't try to translate it. I could barely pay attention in that class when all I could do was worry about whether or not the professor was going to call on me.

Running to the bathroom in the middle of class whenever the professor looked to my row was getting old, and I really wasn't picking up on a thing when I was busy determining my chances of getting called on that day. So let's just say this made memorizing the content I couldn't read that much harder.

Two hours passed, and I realized I couldn't actually remember these few lines for very long. I'd start another paragraph after remembering the last paragraph, then forget the previous paragraph like I never tried to memorize it to begin with. My eyelids only got heavier, my chest grew tighter, and I just wanted to fling the book in the trash.