Intersting, I seem to have adapted to the dorm very well. But I'm still very anxious...

[Locut0s]

I would have thought that the socializing and learning to live with 12 other guys would have been something of a stressor for me but I find myself quite happy here for the most part. I AM a little home sick but for the most part it feels quite comfortable here. I DID overdo the drinking last night with the guys, ended up throwing up and passing out in my room but that's not going to be a habit. I find just being away from my parents is something of a vacation. 31 years being around anyone all the time like that, especially when you have an enmesshed personality, isn't healthy.

What does worry me though is that my anxieties over school work have not gone away at all. I AM now immersed in the school environment which means I should be able to concentrate more but my old perfectionism and panic is still there. Whenever I get assigned something I don't understand right away I panic. My first reaction is to clam up and not think about the assignment or problem at hand. I procrastinate because looking at the material gets me panicky. I don't know why I've developed this habit as I know I'm more than capable of understanding the material and doing the work. Year after year I've managed some of the better grades in the classes I've managed to stay in, those that I didn't panic in that is. Of course clamming up and not looking at the material causing me the anxiety is just a recipe for disaster, one I can't afford to make. I'm seriously no sure how I can fix this issue and it has me quite worried about the work coming up.

To give you an idea of how my mind works here's an example. One of the projects we have been assigned is to create a web application for a company off campus. The company in question would like us to design the application using a bunch of tools that I have no experience with. As soon as I started looking into these tools I started to panic. I've never used any of them and have no experience programming with them. The thing is I'm no different in this respect from any of the others on my team, non of them have used these tools either and I am arguably a better programmer than several of the others. Yet they don't panic, I'm the one who does. My mind is immediately filled with thoughts of failing, embarrassment, fear, I get overwhelmed by what now seems like an insurmountable task. Yet if I could just calm down and approached it bit by bit the problem would probably fall before me. But I often can't see it this way emotionally.

I'm going to talk to the program head next week and ask about my options for reducing my course load a bit. If I can drop a couple of courses and take them part time later on it may help my stress levels and hopefully I can deal with things better. I talked to the old program head and he thought it should be quite doable. I suppose I don't like the thought that I can't handle a full course load either though, it makes me feel a bit of a failure, though I know that's not true.