Where's The Hook For The Leviathan?

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" (Mary Anne Radmacher) Never have those words been relevant to any situation I've been in, yet they were the only ones I heard as I went to sleep on Tuesday and woke up on Wednesday. This time last year I was running, all cylinders firing, head strong into what was supposed to be a wonderful summer. But right in front of the dust cloud surrounding me was a pothole. I dropped and rolled and thought I had recovered from missing an exam but I was wrong. Not seeing the engine light on, I continued as usual until I hit Differential Equations. Well my engine blew out and I never made it to the finish line.

Fast foward to the recent past - to Tuesday night. I thought about studying for the mid-term but that didn't quite work out as I was playing with the project and weekly assignment and then got caught up with the other work I had to learn. Determined to get an A (for my feelings' sake) I decided to do over last year's mid-term. I thought, "Hey, I did pretty well - 12 or 13 out of 20 - and I'm getting through with the assignments better than last year, so I'll just run through paper with my left hand before I go to sleep." Sounds like firing on all cylinders with a broken engine?

On Monday (the day before), we had a revision class. We were to do any questions we felt like but we had to do them on the board. So the good student in me decided to look for the toughest question which was most likely to come and do it - just to flex my muscles. In summary, I got eaten up. It was so bad that a student had written up a whole board and some and I had merely scraped 3 lines of working (not counting the 6 I had already erased). Before we got to the half way mark the towel was taken from me and thrown in so I shamefully sat in my chair with my tail between my legs.

While I was doing over the mid-term I sat in my room and stared at question 1...I skipped the theory part and soon found myself stuck in the mud with 4 questions to go, failing eyes, and bleeding energy from a torn confidence. I closed the book, utterly disappointed with myself and wondering where and how are these marks going to come by me. Then I remembered the quote.

By the afternoon of the exam I had exhausted all my human resources and decided to learn the definitions and trust God to get me over the 65% threshold. As I sat in the exam before the papers were given out, I felt scared. I hate failing. I did it twice too many times in my life. It's easier to fail and walk away thinking you weren't good enough than to fail and try again wondering if you are good enough. I sat in the exam and thought, "2 hours. That means I'm out of here in 1 and a half." I could not have been more wrong.

The paper had 6 questions and was worth 75 marks. At times I wondered if I was doing a final exam or a mid-term. Everything we had done came back except "What is the lecturer's name?" It looked simple (it was simple, from a math perspective) as I read through the questions but when I hit question 2 I blanked on the only thing I thought I had a grasp on. I thought, "Oh great. Now what?" and then skipped that question. As I continued the paper got harder and I was becoming more tired and after the first hour I hadn't gone half way through the paper. There was a five minute space where I felt like doodling until enough of the class had gotten up but then I just sat in my chair and asked, "Where's the hook for this leviathan?"

I really can't tell you if it was hooked or if I got dragged down to the depths of the sea, whether inside or outside. All I know is that I handed in a paper with all questions attempted (I remembered how to do the question...the long way). The tests aren't over just yet, I have two more mids to go then it's home run to the finals. In many ways it feels like the NBA so I can only hope I have the officials' support as I keep playing.