16. My Dream Story so far

No triggers. 

Like Carrie says in her book, dreams can change, and develop over time. At thirteen, my main dream was to have friends again, which, happily, I have achieved. As a little girl I wanted to be a writer (a novelist), but as I grew older and didn't read much anymore, that dream began hiding at the back of my head. At 14, 15 I really wanted to be a singer. My plan was to go to a German Talent Show once I turned 16. Why that didn't happen, you can read in one of my other blog posts. It's probably good that I didn't. I wouldn't have fitted in at all. But I still had the dream of becoming a singer. I began writing little 2 minute songs with my guitar at 15, which turned into 6 minute songs at 16. At the moment, I actually mostly write songs which are 3-4 minutes long, yay me :D But I also started wanting to be a lawyer at age 14 (or even 13?), because I was watching WAY too many german court shows after school. The topic really did interest me, the amateur acting could be hilarious, and I might have had a slight crush on some of the lawyers. But that dream slowly faded, and I no longer saw it as a dream, but as a possible option, when I turned 18 and actually had to choose what to study. My main dream was still to become a singer, and be in a musical (which I had developed a love for when my class went to see 'On the Town' when I was 14 or 15. I absolutely fell in love with this musical but also with the entire musical world! I sure wasn't expecting that from a school trip!). But my parents were very clear that music was a hobby, not a profession for me. I still could have persued it, but the truth is, I needed to find my own way, anyway. I didn't want to be like the other singers. I didn't want to be made into something I'm not. Soo I will somehow still try to become a singer, on my own terms. Mainly, I just want to sing. The dream of becoming an author reappeared some years ago when I started writing again and actually completed writing my first little book! This was still when I thought that the hardest part was finishing a book, rather than getting someone to publish it!
Right now I have three career dreams: Become a singer, become a writer and help people. I want to finish my law degree and get a psychology degree as well in order to gain access to jobs in which I can help people overcome really difficult situations. Soo actually I'm persuing four careers at the moment. This is my dream story. What's yours?

15. First chapter of my book 'A Billion Times Me' - Please help to improve it! :)

I've always loved writing and my dream has always been and still is to become a published author. I have finished a couple of books and I have sent queries to agents, but no success. This is the first chapter of 'A Billion Times Me'. Can you please tell me what you think and how I could improve it? Thank you! :) 

One

Rachel

Rachel stared at the slimy mass before her through her big, round goggles. The long, flat magnet that she held in front of her eyes made the mass her own to control. It looked like a blanket. A large, slimy, disgusting blanket.

Fully concentrated, she extracted a fluid from a test tube with her other hand and made it drop gently into the mass. Nothing happened. With a sigh, and still holding up the magnet, she began to scribble down another way to set up the experiment. She did not hear a door open, but suddenly she heard her father's voice. Slowly, she turned around. Her father was peaking through the open door. He gave her a friendly smile.

“Darling, it's ten already. You should be in bed.”

Rachel nodded and pointed at the open experiment before her.

With a shrug and a smile he left to let her continue. He had no idea what she was doing. In fairness neither did she at the moment. But when Rachel turned back to the equipment table, a smile broke out over her face. So it had worked. The liquid she had dropped into the mass had settled in the middle and was now changing colours. There was a puff noise and some smoke which made her know she had created... something. What, she could not tell. She pulled the small-ish stone-thing – was it a stone-thing? - out of the dark mass and wiped it on her lab coat. She looked at it with big eyes but the only significant factor she could find was that it was of a colour and material she could not recognize. It looked like glass but it wasn't glass. It looked like a jewel but it wasn't a jewel. She shrugged and tucked the thing in her trouser pocket for safe-keeping. Then she noted everything in her small, scrawly handwriting. She threw the mass into the chemical waste bin and swapped the round goggles for her angular spectacles with the black frame. She took off her lab coat and hung it on a hook. It stood out quite a bit in that certain shade of pink, flashing laundry incompetence. Oh well. At least she had a lab coat. She released her dark brown, almost black silky hair from its bound. It fell smoothly over her shoulders. Satisfied with the room's clean state she left it, locking the door behind her. Her dad was reading a magazine. He stood up when he noticed her and smiled.

“Proud of you, honey”, he said, “ready to go?”

She let him help her slip on her coat, as it was winter and cold outside. It was a starless night and darkness wrapped her into another coat, one that was as comforting as it was deceitful. Their footprints in the snow were significantly different in size. Rachel had tiny feet, even for her tender age of eleven, while her father had quite big feet, even for a tall, grown man.

They were greeted by the warm embrace that was her mother. Her thick, red hair swirled around as she greeted them. As always, she was excited about everything. Rachel loved that about her, but it could also be highly annoying.

“I could have sworn it was night, but the sun just came in!”, Angela Lake cried out and kissed her cheek.

That was one of the things Rachel did not like about her mum: The fuss she made about her daughter.

“How are you, my dear?”, Angela asked, her blue, innocent eyes looking straight into Rachel's dark, deep ones.

“I'm fine, Mum”, she signed, which did not stop her mother from giving her a tight hug anyway.

“I've made you some soup”, she said excitedly.

Rachel did not like soup. She especially did not like the soup her mother made. It usually contained burnt leftovers. It tasted like her mum meant to poison her. Rachel knew she was trying to be a great mum to her. But there were some things someone else should have taken care of. Cooking, to name a crazy example. Her dad mouthed “sorry” to her. He had already eaten. Rachel sighed noiselessly and sat down on the kitchen bench to obediently receive her bowl of soup. Angela gave her a large ladle full, which Rachel eyed suspiciously. But it did not taste half as bad as she had expected it to.

“Now Rachel, tell me”, Angela Lake began, watching her with that concerned look in her eyes that Rachel so hated, “are you sure that teacher isn't exploiting you? Having you work late like that when you've got school in the morning!”

Rachel shook her head firmly. Professor Dens was not exploiting her. He had never asked anything of her. He had just been kind enough to help her do what she wanted to do.

“I do think you ought to be home earlier on a school night. Your grades are down again...”

Rachel shrugged. Her grades were constantly bouncing. Her mother knew that as much as she did.

“I'm just saying, you have to be careful not to get exploited...”

“I am not getting exploited”, Rachel signed to her and stood up.

She had eaten about half of her bowl of soup, which was more than she usually managed.

“I want to do this. Professor Dens is very kind to me. My grades will bounce back. Good night, Mum.”

She hugged both her parents and left the room.

“We have an amazing daughter”, she heard her father say to Angela, “she's smart. She has the sense not to get exploited. You worry too much.”

She heard her mother sigh.

“I worry all the time. That's the curse of being a mother. Maybe if we had a second child, one with lesser problems...”

“Rachel is fine, darling. We don't have to get ourselves another child to see that.”

Rachel did not go to her room. This was far too interesting.

“Sometimes I wish”, Angela said in quite a sad voice, “that she wasn't such a problematic child. I know that sounds horrible, especially since I work with disadvantaged children, but I can't help the way I feel. Sometimes I wish, I could turn the clock back...”

Rachel knew precisely to which moment Angela wanted to turn the clock back.

“Rachel is not a problematic child, Ange. She's different, that's all. You just want her to be normal. I get that. But I think it is wonderful how gifted she is. She could really make an impact on the world.”

Angela looked up at him.

“Daniel, do you know how many times Rachel's new school called today? Three. And that's not counting that time I didn't pick up. 'What's the matter with your daughter, Mrs Lake? Surely you must know... She's your daughter, isn't she?' Do you have any idea how frustrating it is, to try to explain again and again that you do not have a clue why your daughter won't speak?”

Rachel heard her dad move a chair. She closed further in on them and saw him give her mum a sympathetic kiss.

“Of course I know, honey. I'm possibly the only one who does. You're right, it is frustrating. But if it's frustrating for us, can you imagine how frustrating it must be for her?”

Angela shrugged. “She never seemed to mind much.”

It had all started when Rachel was a proud first year pupil of Springsen's Honourable Primary School. The school took kids with a high IQ in for free. Rachel had passed the IQ test with ease. She was one of three children in her class of ten, who were labelled 'highly gifted'. It had all started so well that her mum had almost died of all the excitement and pride. Her dad had been happy as well, but in a less jumpy and noisy kind of way. Then something happened which changed the small family's world entirely. At first the teachers had thought that Rachel had caught a bad case of stubbornness when she, from one day to another, refused to utter a word. Her parents had not thought much of it either at first, but when several days passed and she still was not speaking, they were severely worried. Nothing had worked on her in the past days. Nothing the school had tried: patience, impatience, praise, anger, detention, suspension, making her sit by herself and all the empty threats an entire team of teachers could come up with had had no effect whatsoever. Mum and Dad, too, had tried everything from yelling at her to giving her a cuddle. When she still did not even make a sound, they started to think there was something very wrong with her indeed. They took her to numerous doctors, from their local GP to even a certified brain surgeon, but they all just gave them the same answer: “There is nothing medically wrong with your daughter. Try a psychiatrist.” And so they did.

Rachel was happily participating in all the activities that did not involve using her voice. But when the lady asked her to answer a question she refused to even try telling her what the problem might be. In the end her parents went to see a specialist doctor and asked him if it was possible for a brain to forget how to speak. The specialist thought that it might be possible, but highly unlikely. The Lakes decided not to put their six-year-old daughter through any more tests, but to accept her and love her for who she was now. The school, however, was not so understanding. Some of the teachers kept pressing on Rachel to speak. They kept saying she was a stubborn, defiant and stupid little girl and made her sit in a corner. Rachel did not mind. She hardly seemed to mind not being able to speak anymore. She did not mind sitting in the corner much, either. It did not keep her from listening. She listened to every word the teachers said very carefully and weighed it against her own knowledge and values. She aced most of her tests and some of the teachers praised her for it. The other pupils just thought she was weird. Someone spread the rumour that what she had was contagious and from then on no one would sit next to her anymore. In all of that Rachel grew quite lonely and even more attached to listening to what everyone said. She started keeping little notebooks, in which she noted when someone had said something interesting, no matter if it had been a teacher or a pupil or someone she happened to listen to on the street.

When people asked Rachel why she did not speak, she would only shrug. She learned Sign Language in three weeks and tutored her parents, who were still taking lessons a year after she was fluent in it. She never complained. In fact, she did not seem to mind much. After a while, Daniel Lake grew to be exceptionally proud of his brave little daughter. Rachel was exceptionally proud of her father, too. He was a fire fighter and had saved many lives.

Knowing him as family or friend, you would never have guessed he was a fire fighter. He was very clumsy and quite often forgetful. But he was very good at his job.

“It doesn't matter how I act at home”, he told Rachel once, “there I can drop everything, literally and figuratively, and no one will get hurt. If I did that at work, someone might die. People are always as strong as they need to be.”

That made sense to Rachel when she stared through the black frames of her glasses, ignoring the sneering remarks from the children and teachers who seemed to think she had lost her hearing as well as her voice. Teachers never quite seemed to be able to decide whether she was stupid or smart. Some teachers grew very angry at that and gave her extra homework when she would not answer their questions. Some just always gave her a 'C', no matter what she did. Rachel could have been furious at the injustice of that. But she found that she did not really mind. The teachers were bound to their limited intelligence and more than that their limited sense of care, so she could not really blame them for not understanding her. Bad grades did not stop her from learning and they did not encourage her to study more. In fact they made no difference whatsoever.

Her parents had stopped asking to see her work after her dad had once taken a look at a science essay of hers and understood nothing at all.

“I get where your teachers are coming from”, he had said, shaking his head, “maybe you could try to make it a little bit simpler?”

“I will never get anywhere if I make everything simpler”, she signed, “I want to do big things. Change the quality of life on the planet. I don't have time to write simple essays for simple teachers.”

Her father shook his head at her arrogance. But since he principally agreed with her, he did not stop her from treating school work the way she wished to.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rachel had figured out she was adopted at age seven. She told her father a year later. He was surprised she knew, which in turn surprised her as it was so obvious: His hair was goldish-blond, her mother's red, his eyes were green, her mother's blue. Rachel's hair was almost black. Her eyes were brown.

Her father understood that she wanted to meet her birth parents and offered to help her find them. And eventually, they did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The man who came out of the big, white house when they rang the bell was undoubtedly her birth father. His hair and lips were exactly like hers. They did not tell him who they were. Instead, they asked for directions. Daniel managed to start a conversation with him about his children. Her birth father, who was called Rupert Lind, was a young man of about thirty years. He had married her birth mother, Tara Lind. They had six kids. All girls. Tara had taken them out with her mother and mother-in-law for an all girls' trip.

When Rachel signed to him he had no clue what it meant. Her dad had to translate for her:

“Are you happy?”

Rupert looked at her in surprise. Then he smiled.

“Yes, little girl, I'm very happy. My family is wonderful and I have a great job. I could not ask for a better life.”

This would have been a queer answer out of anyone. But out of her birth father Rachel found it downright insulting. She asked if she could use his bathroom. He let her into his house. Then he went back outside. It was almost too easy, standing on the window sill and planting the bug just a tiny bit above the curtain unseen. She took a little time to look around. There were photos everywhere.

'My mum', Rachel thought, as she tenderly touched the family photos one by one, 'my sisters.' But it sounded wrong in her head. The children were all tiny. She would have been the oldest by about two years, she reckoned. Two of the girls were twins. Her birth parents had been very busy. She left the house with a sad feeling in her heart.

“All done?”, Rupert asked kindly. Rachel nodded. Then she went over to her dad, her real dad, the blond one, the fire fighter whom she was so proud of, and gave him a hug. Rupert saw them and smiled.

“I hope that I'll have such a good relationship with my girls, too, when they get to that age.”

'Me, too', Rachel thought. They drove off, waving.

She made a habit of listening in on her birth family every evening before dinner. Rupert had not lied, they were quite a happy bunch. The children's names all began with an 'H'. Hanna, Harriet, Hazel, Helen, Hettie and Hilly. They were all very pretty, full of life, intelligent, loving children. It was good that her birth sisters were happy and not missing anything. It would not be fair to change that. It was very clear that they did not want or need her. She had never been mentioned, she was not a part of any of their lives. And she was not like them, either. Neither of her birth parents appeared to have any interest in science. A picture of Jesus hung in their kitchen, above the sink, which Rachel found quite ironic. None of the girls were mute. After three weeks of listening in on their conversations, Rachel decided it was time to bury them. She deactivated the bug in their home via remote control from her bedroom. Then she buried the remote control in her back garden. Then she went to have dinner with her parents. She never mentioned any of it to them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Professor Dens was quite a strange figure. He took it to heart to represent the stereotype of the 'nutty professor' at school. He always wore colourful suits and amazingly colourful ties and said things no one else dared or wished to say. Rachel had admired him instantly. She loved that he was different. That he stood out, like she did.

“Well, class”, he had said to thirty-one new pupils, “welcome to this school. You will love and loathe it, no doubt. Usually at the same time. You will learn things here you never wanted to learn and you'll forget them faster than you could imagine. Your goals for the time you spend at this school and also for the time you spend in my class should be threefold: have a bit of fun, call a teacher rightfully a tosser and learn something exciting that sticks to your brain like an expensive type of glue. Now, what do you think glue is made of? Armand?”

A little boy with bright red hair shot out of his seat and answered:

“Skin, bones and hooves of farm animals, sir!”

“Relax, dear child. No need for getting up and calling me 'sir'. What you said was a correct answer, Armand. Correct answers are boring. Lucas, tell me a wrong answer.”

'How does he know their names?' Rachel wrote on a piece of paper and passed it over to the girl sitting next to her.

Before the girl could answer, Professor Dens suddenly appeared in front of them and snatched it out of the girl's hand. He read it aloud.

Before Rachel could get angry, he smiled at her.

“I like to inform myself before I get into the cage with the wild animals. But your name seems to have slipped my mind. What was it again?”

Rachel scribbled some words on another piece of paper and handed it to him. 'Rachel', the paper read, 'I don't speak.'

“Rachel. Indeed”, the professor said, “now, Lucas! Thought of an answer?”

Taken aback, the boy shouted: “Giraffes!”

“Giraffes! How wonderful! Now, wherever did you get that idea?”

“I think I read it somewhere”, the boy said, now suddenly turning pink.

“How practical, on a scale from one to ten, do you think it would be to farm giraffes for glue?”

Lucas thought about that for a moment.

“Five?”, he then said, looking quite uncertain.

“Five! Grand answer!”

The boy looked at him in disbelief.

“It is?”

“Why, of course it is!”

“Blimey”, said Lucas, “I never get anything right.”

“Wait, I'm confused”, a pretty girl with a big, green bow on her hazel-coloured hair said, wrinkling her nose, “do they make glue from giraffes?”

“May do, may not, Rosie. Maybe we'll find out one day.”

The pretty girl looked more confused than ever, while Rachel could not help but laugh.

“Do you find that funny, Rachel?”

He had just been standing on the other side of the room, talking to Rosie, but suddenly he stood right in front of Rachel's nose. Rachel's giggle could not have made any noise. How did he notice it so fast when he had just been talking to Rosie? She considered her possibilities.

1) Lie. 2) Tell the Truth. 3) Faint. She was not loving any of them.

“We're all waiting, Rachel.”

Rachel tried to read his face. He did not seem particularly angry, but then teachers seldom do before punishing their pupils. Rachel did not think that he had a reason to be angry with her, but then again she had often been wrong about that before.

Slowly, very slowly, she nodded.

“So you did find it funny?”

She nodded again.

“Why?”

This left her at a bit of a difficulty. To her knowledge, he did not understand Sign. And writing all of her answer down seemed odd. She had usually just waited until the teachers carried on with their teaching or sent her outside. This one though, she thought, would not give up easily.

“What did you find funny, child?”

Slowly, very slowly, she took hold of her pen and brought it down to the paper in front of her.

'You are a scientist. You're not meant to question the existence of knowledge.'

He waited until she had finished writing and then took the note from her. He read it silently. Then he smiled, put it in his pocket and introduced the class to the world of elements.

14. Dug myself out from underneath a pile of revision notes

Update and tips on how to deal with exam stress. No triggers that I know of. 

Where have I been? Here and there. Mainly to different places in my mind. Some of which I would have preffered not to visit. Who needs criminal law, anyway?

Oh, right. We do.

I wrote two three-hour exams and I was EXHAUSTED. In Germany, it's not even permitted to write two exams in one day (I think)! No matter the outcome of the exams, I'm glad I have my life back now. I'm a panick-studier. Meaning I don't study for some time, then panic because the exams are coming closer, and panic so much that I can't study, until one or two days before the exams. So, as you can probably tell, I don't usually get high marks. But honestly, in life, it's okay, even important to get all kinds of marks. In order to have school prepare you for life, you need to have periods of success as well as periods of failure. It's important. At least that's what I keep telling myself. At school, I often enjoyed writing exams, even when I was bad at them. I liked that everybody just shut up to think for two hours. Sometimes it's good to shut up and listen. To other people, but also to yourself, to what your brain is telling you. Some people talk so loudly, they don't even know what they're saying. They need attention. But they fail to grasp the concept that, this way, they're not getting any attention from themselves.

Okay, weird sorta philosophical rant over.

Generally, I'm happy. Really happy.

I'm not dealing with depression at the moment. I sometimes have what I think are depressive episodes, which last from a day up to several months. For the past couple of months, I haven't had any that lasted longer than a day :)

I've also started counselling, which seems to be working on some level (I also deal with anxiety) :)

I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks reading in different places in England :D And I want to go to Covent Garden and spend a whole day there! Oh, and I want to write a lot and sing a lot! :)

As you can probably tell from the beginning of this blog post – I'm not exactly the most competent person when it comes to exam stress. But I still want to give you some tips, because even if I fail to use some of them, that doesn't mean you have to!

1. Okay, this is the most hypocritical for me: Study long-term! If you already have a good overview of the topics before the crucial week before the exam comes, it's just about intensifying it – and that's something you can actually do in one week!
2. Pay attention in class and do homework! Also hypocritical for me. Sometimes you're just too busy to do homework in detail. But that just means that when you do have time, you need to catch up with that, too!
3. If you feel like you're failing at school that DOES NOT MEAN YOU'RE A FAILURE. It can have all kinds of reasons. Maybe you're unhappy at school? Maybe a teacher is giving you a hard time? Maybe you're stressed? Maybe you just think in a different way from your teachers? Maybe your strengths lie in areas that don't get tested in your school?
4. You are NOT a number/letter! You are a person. At school, grades are constantly compared. But this is a very bad way to judge people. Your grades do not in any way represent who you are as a person. They DO NOT represent how intelligent you are. They DO NOT represent how kind you are. They DO NOT represent how much you're worth. How could they? It's an infinite number!

I have had all kinds of grades. I was never top of the class (I was too lazy for that and also too bad at maths/science) but I was very good at school in some years, especially in subjects such as German, English or Music. In other years I was almost failing. Do you think I was suddenly less intelligent? No. I was just unhappy. It also took me a long time to figure out that it's not about how good it is what you're writing, but how easy it is for the teacher to mark. If it's exactly what they wanted you to write, plus a little extra with a cherry on top, they're gonna be thrilled with your work. If it's a more individualist approach, they're gonna be confused and annoyed. There may, of course, be teachers who are happy to read something completely new, and who actually understand what you're trying to say, and who are prepared to make a judgment call and abandon the strict marking scheme – but that's not the majority.

Of course you're allowed to feel happy when you get good grades, and upset when you get bad ones. But neither feeling should take over. And it's important to support each other in these things. There's nothing better than having a friend be there for you when you have a bad grade, giving you a hug and telling you it's okay everybody gets bad grades sometimes.

5. Create an environment you feel happy and calm in! People have told me again and again how important it is that I clean my room before I study in order to concentrate better. I'm sure they're right. But that could take several hours. Which I don't have. Plus people don't seem to get that completely clean and tidy rooms completely creep me out! There's something not-human about them. I'm not saying all clean and tidy people are aliens. But are you? I'm curious. So: Either clean your room to a degree you're happy with or study somewhere else. Listen to music if it helps you. Use Nanny for Google Chrome to keep yourself from getting distracted. Use fun, colourful fonts or pens to make sure what you're doing is the most colourful – because the eye automatically moves to what is most colourful. A very awesome person I know actually puts WashiTape around the space she wants to study in on her desk in order to be able to concentrate just on that space. Tea and some treats are fine.

6. I'm not gonna say 'don't panic'. Because that's the least useful thing you can say to a person who is panicking or almost panicking, right next to 'why are you panicking?'. Instead I'm gonna say: Be kind to yourself. Sometimes you're too freaked out to study. So? Does that make you less of a person? Does that make you less smart, less kind, less awesome? Of course not! If you just want to sit in your bed with the duvet over your head, eat some chocolate and have a little cry because it's all too much – do that! It's okay. We've all done it. Better yet, go and talk to someone about it. Someone who understands and doesn't put you under more pressure. Take a step back and see that the most important thing is that you're here. And that so many awesome things are waiting for you. And that at the end of your life your main regret is not gonna be: “Urgh, I wish I'd studied more for that exam!” In fact, you won't even remember it. Love yourself no matter how much time you spend studying, how much time you spend procrastinating, or how good or bad your grades are.