don't rain, the parade hasn't started yet.

Normally I think of the title of my posts during the middle or sometime after I finish. But I came up with this one first, before I wrote anything else.
And that's because I had a revelation. So yesterday I signed my life away when I took the cardiovascular test - 9 pages of pure you know what, with no multiple choice. Just short answer, fill in the blank, and essays. And when you don't remember the word hemolysis, or you might have forgotten what happens to a baby with hemolytic disease of the newborn, or maybe you just put one of the nodes out of order for the intrinsic conduction system, there is no mercy. No 'all of the above', no time to skip it and come back to it later.
But the best part is that we grade our own tests during class the next day. It's like living through your own death for 50 whole minutes. But since this test is so long, it spans 2 whole days. Like a terrible carnival circus.
So now we will all be sleep deprived, sitting in complete torture not knowing our grades until tomorrow. And tomorrow we go over the essays. Which was the biggest zit on my test. My handwriting was so abysmal that not even I can tell what it says.
My plan was to skip 3rd period today and then just come back all the other periods, but my father denied my request. So I had to go. It was my civic duty to go.
So we started correcting the test. The whole time everyone in the room is in a half-hopeful, half-I-don't-even-care-anymore mood. I was sort of on the half-hopeful side. But then your dreams are crushed when he tells you that your answer is wrong and there is no chance of half credit. And then you sigh this long, dramatic, heaving sigh, and the process repeats.
I kept on drawing Xs, subtracting points, and the outlook was dismal. I was a little bit sad.
We have this ritual in that class on grading days. If we know we did badly, we get out our calculators so we can add all the points. We will always say, "Is it a calculator day?" And yes, today was one of those days. So I grabbed mine and added the points. It was almost like cutting off your limbs and watching yourself shrivel up and die. But since the test was out of 200 points, and I only missed 30 points, I had an 85.
And I was expecting to fail.
The whole day I was expecting that I had failed. We haven't finished grading, but the lowest I could get, if I didn't write anything for either essay, is barely failing. So since I know I got the first essay completely right (we'll see on that second one..), I know that grade is out of the question.
I woke up this morning with the mindset that I was going to fail. It was a given and I would need to accept it. But instead, I was pleasantly surprised.
But I limited myself to being pessimistic and I didn't let myself think of anything but failure. I mean, I don't have to be all "Even though I didn't study, I'll pretend I did really good!", but opening your mind to the possibilities can change your day. And since I thought this would be a bad day, I thought I would have nothing happy to write about. But instead, I got to see our school put on the play Eurydice during French and we did a fun activity in history.
You can't rain on the parade if it hasn't started yet. At least wait for the vintage cars and the marching bands to play before you decide to rain on it.
Si vous ouvrez votre esprit, vous verrez chaque possibilité, et vous changerez vos pensées.
If you are not French or do not know French, I have two words for you: Google Translate.
Two random thoughts: (1) This post has a record-breaking number of spelling errors [which I corrected, I hope], and (2) I hate when I'm typing a contraction like shouldn't and won't, and I accidentally press ; so the word would be don;t instead of don't. They should consider changing the keyboards.