Wednesday
11 March 2015
10.30am

You feel unfit, unhealthy, unattractive.

You sit in front of the computer all day working with all sorts of techy programs, staring at stimuli, text, data. By mid-day your eyes blur out from the strain but you don't stop. You can't stop. Dinner waiting at home? That can wait. You have a magical momentum going on right now and you just have to finish everything. You can't risk losing it, you can't risk forgetting where you last stopped or what you have to do to achieve this desired effect. You don't stop.
You need to be in school for a meeting with prof, or just be in an environment more conducive for work. Doing your hair, picking out clothes, choosing a bag? No more. You pull your hair back in whatever way possible, wear whatever you can grab first and drag the same heavy bag out everyday, no packing required and you know everything will be in there. Your principles about no slippers to school; out the window. You're going to be stoning in the same lab the whole time. Not attending lessons, no respect has to be paid to any lecturer. Comfort is all that matters. Vanity is reduced to dust.
You want to get out there and enjoy fresh air, enjoy the adrenaline from some healthy movement and snap out of this trance. No, you can't. Every gust of moving crisp air on your face is an unforgiving reminder that you are at the wrong place. You should be rusting out your joints and muscles on the swivel chair in front of your computer. You should be standing guard outside your prof's door lest she shows up for your scheduled meeting.

FYP tells you you should have no life till submission.

You never sleep.

You don't feel like you've ever slept because your mind's acting like an overworked CPU, hanged on SPSS and refuses to shut down. Maybe it's just waiting to crash.
You "wake up" at 4am wondering why you're is still on the work you last did or looking through piles of statistics. "I thought I shut the com off?" "I thought I went to bed?". Yes you did, but your mind hasn't. I say "wake up" because you feel like you were awake the whole time. Semi-conscious and VERY busy.
When you do fall into unconscious sleep, you dream of terrible things happening. Your prof. disappearing on you, your testing materials screwing up, your data disappearing etc etc. Sometimes the terror extends into other domains, like your cousins turning their backs on you, or anything that means your life is falling apart.
It's almost as if it's punishing you for resting. "Now, WAKE UP AND DO SOME WORK!"

FYP distorts, even consumes your sleep.

You become psycho.

You access your email folder every 3 minutes, sometimes even less. You refresh it like your life depended on it and you wonder why your prof. or other correspondents aren't on their emails as religiously as you.
You know you're being excessive and irrational but you do it anyway. You stop to wonder if anyone else in the lab's judging your incessant refreshing but you remind yourself: Spotlight Effect. "Who's going to be so free to notice your internet activity?" Refreshing resumes.
You're so paranoid your computer will crash within the next month, your usual procrastination disintegrates and you set out to get an external hard drive. Immediately.

FYP overrides all reason and sanity.

Oh. Did I mention?

FYP also makes you forgetful.
You forget you didn't have lunch till you remember you forgot dinner.
You forget you have an interview scheduled because you want to run studies so bad.

Yes.

FYP is a monster.

squeaked.
10:49 AM
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