Gaaaaaaaah!

Do you guys want to know something interesting? Something I just realized about say... 24 hours ago?

University is HARD WORK.

It's funny, at the beginning of my A-levels I was told that "this will the be the hardest stage of my education" and "the jump from GCSE to A-level is by far the biggest". I'm not so sure. Did you see the size of that physics textbook?! That covers the first year of my university physics education. And because of my course (physics and maths) that takes up less than half of my modules this year. I may have no personal experience of the other departments, but just one glance at the required reading material from say, theology or classics, (courtesy of my corridor mates) makes me feel quite faint.

It's true that the size of a textbook only speaks about the volume of material to be learnt, and not necessarily it's difficulty. Once again, I can only speak for maths and physics, but the average mark for the end of year examinations in my modules is about 60%, and the mock exams in January have a rather measly average of 40%. Considering the fact that most of the people who come to to Durham are hard-working people, (they had to get the A-levels in the first place after all) this is absolutely terrifying.

People who had the "pleasure" of being in my general presence while I'm in full revision mode (my family mostly) will know that when it comes to tests and exams, I'm a perfectionist. Every question I get wrong I scrutinize. Why did I get it wrong? What was the flaw in my understanding? Did I just have a massive derpy moment of screaming, unforgivable stupidity? It's more often than not the last one. And all those derpy moments add up.

And I'm expected, on average, to lose nearly HALF of the marks on the test?!

This is destroying my mind.