Overwhelmed

Weekly Report 01/23/2018 to 01/29/2018

Lately I have been feeling really burned out. I know that there is so much ahead of me that will be much more difficult than the “hardships” I have been facing right now, but for some reason I have had a hard time managing everything. For starters, I decided to trade my early release period (which I had gotten from dropping AP Physics earlier this year) to take AP Government and Politics during the second semester. Already I know that I love this course and it will provide me with extra legal knowledge as I begin to meet on a regular basis with my mentor, however, it has added a significant amount of work to my plate, which has made me feel very anxious recently. I do not know if this is the sole reason for such a drastic shift in my mental health, but it seems to be that my head is under water and I am barely able to keep up with the pace of everything right now.

This semester is the single most important semester of my high school career, so I really want to make sure that I am making the most of my time and energy. I want to be involved in anything and everything, but I am beginning to realize that I physically cannot continue to do so. My sleep schedule has been wrecked; I have been falling asleep unintentionally and waking up at two or three in the morning to finish the work that I can, then getting up again at six to start the next day. I have even been grinding my teeth at night so much that my jawbone has begun to crack and pop when I try to open my mouth, and when I spoke with my orthodontist, he explained that the only real solution to this is alleviating stress.

I just feel like my mind is so cluttered and unfocused in class and at home because I have gotten behind on my schedule and my quality of work has noticeably declined. I hate not completing work to my best ability, so I know that something needs to change about whatever is going on. This stress about time and workloads has caused me to feel very nervous about school and very unmotivated about my other interests, which has not helped me to remain focused and driven at all.

I also believe that realizing more and more that I may not be cut out for the law has really messed with my mind and created a great amount of anxiety in regards to my future. I was so sure that this year would be a reassurance that the law is my thing, and then next year I could apply for ISM two to possibly study a more specific field, but in seeing a more up close and personal account of what it really means to be a lawyer, I have realized that this may not be something that utilizes my best qualities. This uncertainty has really stirred up this feeling of anxiousness that I have never experienced, especially due to the fact that I have been aligning all of my classes to go down a law path. Now that I am left with just one year left, I am worried that I do not have enough time to readjust to my discovery.

Nevertheless, I cannot let this completely alter who I am. I am grateful to have learned this much about myself from the ISM program this year, but now I need to figure out how to trust that I will be able to find a different path and my uncertainty will be resolved at some point. I am very much a controlling person; I love to have a plan and feel secure in it. Having to essentially “find myself” after realizing that I am not who I thought I was is challenging, but I need to loosen up and allow myself to step back a little and understand that this is only a short part of my whole life, and this dilemma will be solved with patience.