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NOTE: September 9, 2012 20:03 This is an old post that has been transferred from my old Multiply account. In the end, I love the Dragon. She is probably one of the best things that ever happened to me in UP.

Because I misunderstood what my Comparative Litearture (CL) professor wanted (I had to ask Joyce for clarification), I’m going to be spending the weekend in complete solitude and work overtime on my final paper and my tedious 5th report. I get this feeling that I am going to screw this subject up so badly that people are going to think I’m a bloody idiot.  Why is it that every time I work so hard on a subject in UP (ever since my undergrad days), these are the subjects that I get low grades in, whereas the subjects that I crammed for and don’t even attend would always net me a perfect 1.0 (for which some of my classmates hated me)??? Why? Why?

Last Saturday, I nearly broke down while doing my 4th CL report. It was, in theory, easier than “Literature and Linguistics” because it was about “Literature and Mythology”.  I love mythology. But for some reason, halfway through my report, my brain started slowing down and I couldn’t process what I was reading. I was fast enough during the first part but my brain just stopped in the middle, and I had to crawl, with much effort, through the rest of the remaining pages.  Plus Google Docs went haywire on me. So frustrated was I that I threw a hissy fit, with Cris (on Skype) and my brother witnessing my childish tantrum.

Today, I spent the entire day at the UP mass comm library working on my Information Networks (COMM321) and Filipino Communicative Behavior (COMM303) mid term papers. It took me less than a day to finish these 15-paged papers. These are my majors. And yet I finished them with a sense of accomplishment, feeling so damned good about myself. CL is not my major. It’s an elective. Yet it takes me three days just to process a single 20-paged CL report. WHY??? WHY???

Yesterday, Joyce told me something that had me feeling sorry for myself.  She just realized that I am the only one among our classmates that has a deadly combo of SNSD-Dragon-SNSD: 9 units of pure hell.  The rest only have two SNSD’s and one easy elective from WD or Educ, while Jenny, who was supposed to be taking my exact same combo dropped from the Dragon.

Don’t get me wrong. SNSD is a difficult professor to deal with. Everyone at Mass Comm avoids him — even my friend Marcus “The Snakecharmer” when he was an undergrad and goodness knows how long ago that was. One SNSD is already torturous for many so can you imagine me going through two of him? But he’s a happy kitten compared to the Dragon. So yeah…I am the only one in our group who’s going through the worst nightmare, with no one to relate to. Save for Joyce. But she only has a SNSD-Dragon combo.

Oh…did I mention that Jenny dropped from CL? When she did, Joyce and I were the only two remaining students left to face the Fire Breathing Dragon on a weekly basis. We also had to carry the load of an entire class. Most of the Dragon’s previous students only reported 3 times because of the huge class size, but Joyce and I will go through these mind-numbing reports 7 times since there are only two of us left standing. We’re already at our 4th report…3 more to go.

And while I’m slaving over a subject that’s not even my major, I still nurse the sinking feeling that it will net me my lowest grade in PhD ever.  All this while it exhausted my brain so much that I couldn’t even answer a simple question like, “How many deans are there in your school?” or some other trivia that normally only requires common sense. I’ve lost my common sense. Every bit of it.

My conclusion? Comparative Literature is like being in an abusive relationship. I love it so much but it hits me with a battering ram in return. Repeatedly. I know I should get out (deadline for dropping is on the 19th), but I can’t let go! And like most women in abusive relationships, half of me wants to hold on…while the other half wants to fling herself off the 12th floor.

and my papers are so badly written, i catch subject-verb disagreements and typos just when i’m about to submit them. argh. at least, with blogging, you can edit your errors after re-reading…you can’t do that on paper that’s already been printed on and has traveled from APC to UP.