The home stretch: finishing my degree

I'm not really the kind of person who gets anxious.

I do panic and stress fine, better than most you might say. You should see me tip a house upside down in less than ten minutes because I can't find a pair of glasses and I'm already late for work. But anxiety? Nah.

I'm more of a last-minute-high-temperature-quickly-oh-god-the-printer's-broken-phone-my-mum kinda gal. Slow bubbling nervousness isn't really my thing. At least it wasn't until the joys of week three, term three, year three rolled around. Oh, and I move to London in just over three weeks. (Who was it who said "three is the magic number"? They can go to hell.)

I don't think I'm suffering from real anxiety. Not as a condition. I've just got this horrible rumbling feeling in the pit of my cookie-filled stomach that what if- what if- I mess this up? What if I blank in my exam, or accidentally plagiarise an entire essay, or just faint in a presentation? I know it's unlikely, but I can't get this fear of failure out of my mind.

Are we all feeling like this? Is this what people warn you about? I've not been sleeping because all I can think about is referencing, and I've been feeling kinda sick whenever I try and settle down to relax. I initially put this down to maybe eating a little too much calamari at my new favourite restaurant Lucia's, but I've not eaten any lightly-dusted Cajun squid in ages, so it can't be that.

There's nineteen days in between me and my final piece of work, and as much as I'm desperately trying to get it over with, it doesn't seem very fair at all. Why should our last days at university, our last days in education at all, be felt feeling sick at the thought of failing? Of dropping one mark in fear of changing grade boundaries? I've loved my time at university, I don't want to remember it as a montage of nervously checking word limits and freaking out when an important book is already on loan.

So, to combat this miserable outlook, I'm making a habit of RELAXING. I've started watching Game of Thrones (though as a means to relaxation I can't say it's particularly helpful, that show is tense), I went along to my wonderful Yorker's lifestyle meeting to catch up with the old gang, I went for a sunny lunch with Joanne and I've more or less decided on booking a hotel for my first few nights in LDN to take the pressure off. As cheesy as it sounds, having a little bit of time to yourself in between JSTOR articles, makes the world of difference.