If you looked at me from the outside, you'd probably think I'm lazy. I have exams next week. I know I need to study. I know what's at stake. My scholarship depends on my grades, and failing isn't really an option. So I grab my tablet, open my notes, and tell myself, "Okay. Let's do this." Last Friday, that's exactly what I did. I sat down around 3 p.m., opened my notes, and started reading. Except I wasn't really reading. I kept going over the same sentence again and again until the words stopped making sense. I couldn't get myself to move on.
At first, my thoughts are surprisingly encouraging. I tell myself that I can do it, that I'm smart enough, that the material isn't even that difficult. But those thoughts never stay for long. They slowly get replaced by something much louder. "You don't know any of this." "You're so stupid." "You're going to fail." "You're going to lose your scholarship." It's like my brain suddenly decides that everything I've ever learned has disappeared, and now I have to relearn everything from scratch. The more I try to push through it, the heavier everything feels. My chest gets tight, my body feels like it's made of concrete, and sometimes my heart starts racing. Before I know it, I'm crying.
The crying is almost always followed by this overwhelming exhaustion. Not the kind of tiredness you feel after studying for hours, but the kind that comes after your brain has spent all its energy fighting itself. That day, I gave up and went to sleep. At 3 p.m. Not because I didn't care about the exams, and definitely not because I had worked hard enough to deserve a break. I slept because dealing with everything I was feeling seemed impossible. Sleep felt easier than staying awake with my own thoughts.
Whenever I talk about this, people usually assume the problem is distractions. They tell me to try the Pomodoro technique, to turn off my phone, to find a quieter place to study, or to get rid of anything that could steal my attention. The thing is, I've already tried those things. I've studied in my room, at the dining table, in the living room, in my mom's room, at the library, and even in places that make absolutely no sense, hoping that somehow a change of scenery would fix whatever is happening inside my head. It never does, because my phone isn't the distraction. Social media isn't the distraction. My own mind is.
I think that's why it hurts so much when people call it laziness. A lazy person probably wouldn't spend hours trying to convince themselves to start. They wouldn't move from room to room hoping something would finally click. They wouldn't cry because they want to study so badly but simply can't get past whatever invisible wall is standing in front of them. The hardest part isn't the test. It isn't even the possibility of failing. The hardest part is watching myself fail to do something I genuinely want and need to do. It's feeling like I'm trapped inside my own brain while time keeps moving forward without me.
Over time, this has started affecting more than just my grades. It's affected the way I see myself. I've started believing that maybe I really am lazy. That maybe I just can't learn anymore. That maybe I'm not capable enough for university. The frustrating part is that I know those thoughts aren't completely true. I've done well before. This happened to me in high school too, and eventually it got better. I honestly believed I had left this behind. But somehow, it's back, and I still don't understand why.
I wish I could end this post by saying I found the solution. I wish I had a productivity hack or a mindset shift that suddenly made studying easy again. I don't. I'm still figuring it out. But if you've ever sat in front of your notes, read the same sentence twenty times, cried without really understanding why, and then gone to sleep feeling like you've failed before you even started, I hope you know you're not the only one. Sometimes the biggest battle isn't learning the material. Sometimes it's convincing your own mind to let you try.
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