I pride myself a little too much on my plucky, “can-do” attitude. The more impossible the task, the more I seek to master it. I mean, you’re talking to the girl whose senior quote was: “It’s fun to do the impossible.” (Walt Disney) I’ve never exactly fancied myself Wonder Woman, but my expectations of myself are incredibly high.

So when comps prep season finally rolled around, I was overwhelmed by the impossibility of the reading but determined to kick its butt anyway. I planned, I organized, I scheduled. I made spreadsheets, lists, and even planned how many times a month I’d go to the library for books. And I counted– oh my, I counted. I count down the number of days I have until exams (currently 36), I count the number of texts I have left to read (for each list and then total), I count how many books I have to read a day in order to finish everything.

All of the neuroticism was eventually going to reach a boiling point.

I sat down in the living room with my mother, who (God bless her) has patiently listened to my daily comps stats reports, my summaries of novels that she’s never going to read and my many attempts at talking myself through this thing. I told her that I was probably not going to finish the last 18 or so books, despite my meticulous scheduling. I decided that giving myself at least a week to review (and rest and recover) at the end was more important than reading up until the day of the exam. I said it as if someone had died. My mom stared at me.

“So you read over 200, almost 300, books and you’re telling me you’re going to let those last eighteen to cause you to have a breakdown? Don’t break down at the end and let all your hard work go away.”

She was right. She’s never been so right. I am the Queen of Anxiety-Induced Melt Downs, and the fact is I’ve worked entirely too hard to let that be the case this time around.

As the days wound down, I began to suspect that these last days leading up to my exams would be the hardest, so now I think it’s time to adjust my plan of attack:

• I am going to read about a book a day for the next month.
• I am going to devote more time to doing things that will help me feel more prepared, like meeting with my committee, trying to develop questions, making outline answers to those questions.
• I am going to stop working myself so hard. The anxiety attacks and the shoulder pain isn’t worth it.
• I am going to prioritize my health in this last month. I can’t take the exam if I burn out at the last minute.

The truth is this is hard, and it’s even harder when you’re a person that doesn’t have a great work life balance. I don’t know when to stop. It doesn’t help when you’re a perfectionist– I don’t know when to let go. However, it is time for me to ease up. I can’t continue at this pace. The chronic tension (and pain) in my shoulders and back is telling my otherwise. I love myself too much to let a test break any part of me.