I may or may not have mentioned that I have 6 midterms and a presentation this week alone. It’s not pretty. It’s really really really not pretty.

I’ve gotten roughly 10 hours of sleep in the past two nights and while the first test went pretty well, the second one was a total mindfuck. Everyone seemed equally upset by it, so that’s a good sign. But you just never want to walk out of an exam feeling like you were defeated by a packet of paper. And dude, I totally was today.

When it comes to tests, I am crazy superstitious. I have routines that must be kept, otherwise in the totally irrational part of my brain I just know that I’m going to fail. I’m sure that few, if any, of these things make a difference, but I’ve never claimed to not be totally batshit crazy.

The routine begins the night before. I always sleep in a shirt from my school. It can be any color or style, but it HAS to be a school shirt. No school shirt, no sleeping.

When I get dressed the morning of the exam the outfit is entirely crafted out of superstition.

First, the underwear. Yea, that’s right, I have exam underwear. I just happen to have 5 pairs of them (in different colors), so I don’t even have to do laundry during exam week. I am nothing if not a planner. I also may or may not believe that one color of the 5 is slightly less effective than the others. I tend to wear those on the days when I feel the most confident. You know, when I don’t need to pull my luck from my underwear.

Then, the shirt for the exam has to be yet another school shirt. And if I’m layering and putting on a sweatshirt, it also has to be a school one. The pants have to be sweats. There can be no jeans when you’re sitting and freaking the hell out for at least 2 hours. Just no. And unless it’s raining, the black reef flip flops. Always.

When I leave for school, I have a playlist to listen to on my drive. It has to be played as loudly as possible and I have to sing. I think it works by distracting me from the gigantic mental breakdown that’s usually rapidly approaching. And the last song on the playlist has to be the same one. This varies over time and since my current obsession is Glee, my last song is always “Keep Holding On” on the highest volume I can manage. If I can’t listen to that before the exam, I feel unprepared and unfocused.

And finally, the writing implement is and always has been the passing pencil. It’s a really worn out blue mechanical pencil with a separate clicky blue eraser that I’ve used on every test for as long as I can remember. I have proven the efficacy of the passing pencil by not using it on a number of quizzes upon which I have set low grade records (23% for. the. win.). And if the passing pencil ever runs out of lead in the middle of an exam, the world might literally stop turning.

Rationally, I doubt any of these things help, but irrationally, which, let’s be honest, is how I operate, I need things to be just so. No, I’m not a control freak, why do you ask?

But surely these aren’t the craziest superstitions, right? Feel free to suggest any that might be useful in the remaining 3 days of mind draining exam filled psychosis. I’ll try anything. Even studying.

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