tbh don't even want the eclipse rn take it back (for context I currently live around/in central Ohio) there are so many out of state people driving around causing so much backed up traffic and the very beginning of the eclipse doesn't start for another 2 ish hours (1:55pm) supposedly the peak coverage is around like 3:10-3:15pm

my drive home from my classes today took an extra 15 mins bc the highway was just stopped bc certain people wanted to merge into already super backed up lanes and ugh. I generally don't like driving anyhow, but this kind of disruption certainly wasn't helping.

If any of you are ever approaching finals week and are feeling panicked, just reassure yourself that there is a very small margin of "worse" you could reach when taking your test compared to what happened to me tonight.

Alright, so I had this history final tonight and let's just say shit went real sour real fast. I had class at 5:30pm and I knew it was going to be a really long night from the get-go because we had to get through half of the class's project presentations, whoever didn't present on Monday when we were supposed to go but ran out of time, plus four group presentations and then the final exam. Because my jaw's been bugging me a lot in the past week, I decided to take some ibuprofen in hopes that it'll dull some of the pain and I'd actually be able to enjoy dinner tonight before class. It's my mom's 50th birthday so she decided she wanted Philly cheesesteaks for dinner which is great 'cause they're one of my favorite meals. So anyway, I took two ibuprofen tablets, had some dinner, and then finished getting ready and headed off to class. We took care of the group presentations first, and my group went second which was great. It meant we wouldn't have to sit around waiting for very long. We got it done, it went well, we did a really good job, whatever. It wasn't until after the fact that I felt it: my anxiety was starting to hype up. I tried sitting through the rest of the group presentations and the individual presentations afterward but my panic was escalating rapidly and I started feeling really funky. My heart rate was rising and my hands were cold and clammy and my stomach was churning, I kept feeling like I was going to throw up. I was dizzy, the room felt like it was spinning. I kept trying to tell myself I had nothing to worry about, that I had already done my group presentation (I did my individual presentation Monday night), all I had left to do was the test and I was prepared so it shouldn't be a massive deal. I had nothing to worry about. And yet my anxiety kept hyping up. I ended up leaving the room three times in a row: once to go the bathroom and try to regroup, another time to get some fresh air, and yet another almost immediately after, making it look like I was pretending to get a phone call so it would give off the illusion that I had an excuse for slipping out a third time and then I proceeded to call my boyfriend in hopes of gaining some reassurance through a quick pep talk. He told me just to take deep breaths and focus on what I needed to get done tonight and nothing else, which I tried really hard to do but even afterward when I went back inside that small auditorium, I still couldn't get a grip on myself. I ended up going up to my teacher at the end of whoever was presenting's presentation and telling her "I don't know if I can make it through the rest of the class, I feel really sick. I want to try and stick it out but if I can't, would there be any way I can make up the final exam?" to which she said I'd have to go visit the testing center to see if I could reschedule a make-up final. I told her I'd try to stick it out and she said okay. So I went back to my seat and struggled through the next person's presentation but I was obviously struggling, hyperventilating and visibly shaking. After that person went, my teacher called me out into the hallway and basically told me to just go home, that she'd find someone to proctor my make-up at some point in the next week. I thought that was really generous of her and I was grateful she was willing to work with me around this unexpected and massive panic attack but on the other hand, I felt horrible knowing I'd have to make the damn thing up. I'm moving clear across the state bright and early Friday morning so my schedule is insanely tight and having to make up the exam just further complicated things. And I was also mad at myself. I was angry I didn't have the strength to stick it out and get it over with. I called my mom once I left the auditorium and told her what happened, on the verge of tears both in anger at myself and fear that my dad would be mad at me for skipping out like that. She said my dad was on his way down to campus to pick me up and she agreed to stay on the phone with me until she got there. I didn't hang up until I was out at the front of the campus and saw my dad's car parked in the parking lot and my dad himself walking up the walkway towards me. I thought he was there to just pick me up and take me home but nope, he said he wanted to sit down and talk with me a bit to see if we could get me to calm down so I could go back in and take the test tonight. I was a little pissed he was so stuck on me doing the thing tonight-- I mean, obviously I was very shaken up and my teacher already told me to just go home, that we'd reschedule for me to make up the exam, whatever, but i wasn't exactly in a state to argue so I sighed and obliged. My dad and I sat on campus and talked a little bit during which I realized that even if I didn't have much strength to walk back in that classroom and tell my teacher I wanted to try and get through the test, I didn't have much of a choice. I didn't have time to reschedule. Making up the test would be cutting things far too close and I knew that. That was part of the reason why I felt so angry with myself for getting dismissed and essentially giving up in the first place, because I knew we were running on a tight schedule here and I felt like I was ruining everything, setting us back, whatever. So with this realization fueling me, I basically stood up and grabbed my bag and told my dad "Come on, I'm gonna go back in there." I did have to stop a couple times just to kind of take a breather and swallow back massive waves of nausea but I did what I had to do. I walked in there and went right up to my teacher and told her, "I think I want to try and take the test. I don't think I have time to make it up. I've had a lot on my plate and I'm moving to the other end of the state on Friday morning so I don't have time to make it up." You'd think from here everything would be super easy, smooth sailing, right? Nope. Turns out she said she ran out of tests so she had to think of a different way for me to take the test. What ended up happening was she projected the word document of the test onto the projector in the auditorium and had me sit at this table in front of it and basically do the whole thing on notebook paper which was...interesting, to say the least. I pretty much almost threw up three times during the entire duration of the test. My hand was shaking uncontrollably to the point where you might guess I was a Parkinson's patient just by my scratchy handwriting. My other hand was gripping the edge of the table the entire time as if I was gonna fall off the edge of the earth if I didn't white knuckle it. My entire body was still shaking so hardcore that it looked like I was having a seizure or was in the midst of my own personal little earthquake. It was terrible. But I had studied for this exam and was so ready to get it over with. My teacher didn't post the final exam review until a few hours before class was supposed to start so I spent a good portion of the afternoon basically cramming, meaning all the information was still fresh in my brain, I just needed to dump it all out onto the page (without dumping my dinner out with it). So that's what I did. I barely even read all the questions out before knowing the answers right off the bat and just jotting them down. Doing the test on notebook paper made things a bit tougher, especially with handwriting as horrible as mine was tonight, but it wasn't until I was a little more than halfway through the test that a girl came up to hand in her test only to discover that the missing exam was stuck between the pages of her own so I was able to pick up where I left off on the notebook paper on the actual test. I got the whole thing done in about ten minutes which was miraculous since I was shaking the entire room and holding back from vomiting the entire time but I got it done and that's all that matters. I apologized to my teacher for how awful my handwriting was and she told me it was fine and told me she hoped I'd feel better. My dad was waiting outside for me when I came out, surprised I had actually taken the test because of how quickly I was in and out. I almost broke down in tears once I got out and he gave me a big hug and told me he was proud of me, that he knew I'd get it done, then carried my bag for me as we walked back to the car. It wasn't until I got home that I realized one of the big culprits behind why I had spiralled into such an intense and overwhelming panic attack, though: it turns out the medicine I took earlier wasn't ibuprofen. It was acetominophen and the two big tablets I gulped down before dinner had a combined caffeine content of 130mg. For someone who never consumes caffeine, has a lower-than-normal BMI/weight, and has IBS on top of that, no wonder I was fucked up. I was accidentally high. I may have even faced a slight caffeine overdose, who the fuck knows? Either way, all I know is that despite all of that, I still took the test and am pretty sure I aced it (or at least god, I hope I did. It'd be funny if I got a perfect score or something but we'll see what happens.) If nothing else, at least my drive can be considered admirable. Took an entire final exam while high off my ass and shaking like there's no tomorrow. God fucking dammit.