When I was a child, I believed that I was a moderately intelligent, relatively hard-working person, and that when I grew up I could pretty much be whatever I wanted to be. It turns out I was being supremely and unjustifiably arrogant, and for starters I feel I should apologise to the people I was at school with for all the times I was inexcusably patronising to you.
I don't know if any of you know what it's like to spend years labouring under a misaprehension, but if you do, you will appreciate that when the truth hits you, it hits hard and is a fairly devasting blow.
These last few years have been eye-opening to me, and have shown the true extent (or more precisely the lack thereof) of my mental powers. My A-levels and first year of University were a disaster, and I think this marked the beginning of the end of my academic career. I have been reluctant to accept this, as I have always felt that academia was my purpose in life: my school work and the absorbtion of new knowledge were, to me, the most important things in the world. However, now, as I reach the conclusion of the first week of exams, I am forced to the recognition that I am actually not as good at education as I have been thinking all my life.
Last year I faced my first major failure, and this year saw me retake 6 of the 8 first-year EngMath units. I really thought I'd done enough this year, I thought my work-rate had picked up again, and that I had a chance. Unfortunately, when it came to revision-time and I started going over my notes & doing past papers, I discovered that I couldn't answer any questions. I have worked myself into exhaustion over the last few months, and now it seems that all of that meant absolutely nothing. In these exams, the pass rate is a measly 40%, and yet out of the 5 exams I have taken this week, I found, by the end of 2 of them, I had not written enough that even had everything been correct (which I know is not the case), I cannot possibly have passed them.
This seemed to me pretty conclusive as evidence that I shan't be continuing my studies much longer, and I don't mind admitting that this realisation was the most shattering of my life. I cannot imagine doing anything other than study, and although I knew I would, at some point, have to venture beyond into the world of work, I never, ever, imagined that it would come so soon, nor that my time at University would be such a catastrophic failure leading to my incredibly low employability (having no practical experience or decent qualifications).
Obviously, as my family keeps telling me, I don't actually know until the results come out on 19th June, but I'm afraid I don't think I'll be in Bristol much longer. While I'm fairly certain no one will bother reading this far down this post or care what happens, I will probably still post my results on here as and when I know them, but until then, if anybody can think of any jobs going that an unexperienced, unqualified young person with mental health problems could do, please let me know.