December 8th, 2025

Today was my own official final day of classes. As stated in a previous post I skipped my women’s history class as it was only review, plus the slide would be posted for us to study. I spent my morning finessing my research presentation that I wrote the night before (I know, bad habits died really REALLY hard).

An hour before class I took a beta-blocker pill, a half hour before class I took another (I was following directions on the bottle, do not worry). The reason why is because these pills get rid of the physical symptoms of anxiety such as stuttering, shaking, etc. While the nervousness was still there, the physical manifestations of it did not appear so I was able to go up to the podium and not stumble over my words like I normally would. I was also not on the verge of tears despite my anxiety asking for it.

I will omit the details of my paper but the topic of it is about queer identities in frontier Canada being systemically erased, this coincided with the policing of Indigenous sexuality alongside anti-sodomy laws. There is more to it than that but thats all I am going to say or I would be here all day.

I was allowed to present last, thankfully, and when I was finished speaking… wow. I swear to everything in my life I was the one presenter that had the most people raising their hands. I was PISSED. Out of everyone that presented their research topics and evidence, why am I the one that had to answer so many goddamn questions? Those beta-blockers worked really well because even though I was agitated to all hell it did not show, and I know this because on my presentation evaluation my professor said “you had expressed earlier about your severe anxiety issues regarding presenting but I did not see any when you spoke.”

I was not happy at all and I was angry at myself for doing this presentation the night before instead of taking several days to make it actually good. I got an A- which was surprising as hell, but that probably means I would’ve gotten way higher if I had just took my time and stopped procrastinating.

As of early January 2026 I have finally started a new ADHD medication (non-stimulant) and I really hope it helps with these problems.