argggh!

Yesterday, I could not believe how one call could change my 2010 Outlook. As I checked my mails when I arrived in the office, no less than 20 mails apart, I got approvals for my 5-day leave for compre review which I filed the previous week, and an email from one of the staffs of our college saying I should call her ASAP. Ironic! I was dumbfounded and speechless for a while when she said I couldn’t take the compre because a new direction from the Program Director. Actually I didn’t know it was a new direction. Last year, all along, I thought I really couldn’t take the exam until they told me I could as long as I complete the core subjects, which I did, before the exam season. So I thought, all these perfectly fitted my plan. September 2010 and I’m done! All my hopes are there, then, after I’ve anticipated what could have been on Feb 27 and the weekends after, after I’ve come to terms with my MIA policy, after I’ve started studying, after my no alcohol policy until the big days, after all those anxiety and anticipation and everything in between (seriously, this has been my default thought lately), the rule that I should be completing all my subjects this term the latest come into the picture. Are you kidding me?! It’s my number 1 to-do list in my 2010 plan for crying out loud. I still had, small but it was there, hopes that I could talk to the director today but I read this morning a memo about it. So, this after all is a non-negotiable rule. I had to skip my first class but was out of the office early enough to attend the second one. Before, I would have declared a no-UP-day already because it was too much of a hassle to travel back-and-forth for two hours for a 1.5 hr class but I decided to go to school anyway since I have nothing planned for the rest of the day. I still have that tiny but detectable amount of hope that maybe, just maybe, they can postpone the implementation of the direction since it makes sense to apply it to the next batches since the rules that should be applied to our batch are the rules that were established when we first came on-board with the program. But of course that won’t be the case. So it’s final. Compre time for me is 2011!

JL said, life is what happens while you’re busy making plans. I couldn’t help but ponder and muse when I came across this line from Jim Paredes’ column I read yesterday: We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have a life waiting for us. How cosmic! Have I planned too much? Have I let my life revolve around the 2010 Iskidrow Plan lately? Was I wrong to anticipate? My friends tell me to let go and just believe that God has better plans. Honestly, I trust and hope that there is. That someday I can connect the dots and understand but right now, all I want to do is pause and wallow in depression and self-pity. I cannot help it. I look back at the terms I have gone underload. I cannot help but hate myself. Entirely my fault!

Now I have so much time in my hands but there is no other thing I want to do but to be busy with compre review. I was not even concerned about office deliverables when in fact this week is the busiest we have anticipated for this quarter. I wished I was never told I could take the compre! I wish I could get off my mind from compre tomorrow: ANYTHING BUT COMPRE! Argggh!

In the expressionless look I had going to school, I was thoughtless -as in blank stare into nothingness. For the first time after a long time I was just observing people. How young the students are. How pseudo-childish-couples act. How tired people are after a day’s work. How two reunited friends seem to not run out of stories. I wonder how they have perceived me. I wonder how frustrated-compre-examinees look like! Arggh!