This might sound like excessive pride but it is so much more than that.
I had always thrived on cramming, on sleeping through math and algebra, on never doing practice problems, on drawing chemical structures only an hour before the test or reading ten chapters in six hours and still acing an exam, on never finishing one read-through of all the lectures included in the coverage, on the pressure of cutting it too close to the deadline. But that does not cut it anymore. Having next to zero study habits does not cut it in this second year of medical school. You have to study hard to pass, even harder to get good grades, and studying hard is something I do not know shit about, because I never fucking had to. I had lived my whole academic life not having to study my ass off to be at the top or near the top of the class or, more recently, to get above average or average grades. And then, two weeks ago, I failed an exam, and today, another. And these last two times were nothing at all like the exam I failed last year, the first exam I ever failed (not counting that one entrance exam that did not mean shit to anyone else but broke me into pieces), just by two points and still having ended up with one of the highest grades in the batch for that module. I failed these two recent exams by a lot and not by chance, and I know I deserve it, because I ended up sleeping instead of studying my weekends away. I know I should learn how to study hard-it is, after all, about time that I did-but I do not know how to. Some of my batchmates will not even believe me when I say I failed, like it is fucking impossible for me to fail, because I am too fucking smart and shit, but that is obviously not the fucking case. Not anymore, and perhaps never at all. Can you imagine what my younger grade school and high school selves would say if they could see what they have become? Then again, they probably would not bother saying anything at all and just jump off the nearest building. Academics was really the only thing I was consistently kind of good at throughout my entire life, which is pretty fucking sad when you really think about it, but that was what I had, and now I do not have it anymore, and, having been conditioned to measure my self-worth based on my grades, it makes my skin itch and my stomach sick and my eyes sting and my chest hurt. It feels like I am losing myself, fading away. Now all there is, is failure. Failure everywhere. I feel it in my blood and in my bones and in the air I breathe in and out.