a time to gather stones together

After a long phone conversation this morning with Adam, I lost my nerve and realized that I was no longer detached and blissful and enjoying life on the outside. I was in denial. My grades were sitting untouched on the web, and it was no longer comfortable not to know what they were. I was getting winded at the gym after five minutes because I just wasn't breathing.

"I think it's time to look," I told my husband, who's back to almost-full health but is still working from home.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm not calm anymore," I said.

I checked the schedule page, which informed me that Property still had not been posted. No matter. I logged in to the private-access system, left my mouse positioned over the Transcript link, went over to my bed and huddled down over my teddy bear as though protecting him from a hurricane.

My husband clicked the link.

Dead silence.

Dead silence.

I tried to inhale and found that I couldn't.

Then, in a neutral-pitched guttural voice, my husband said: "Your Property grade is here."

I managed a choking gasp of air.

"And you kicked ass."

I sat bolt upright; the teddy bear slumped forward in my lap. "In Property???"

"In everything."

In an instant I was clinging to his elbow, on the floor in front of my desk, jabbering breathlessly at the monitor. My Edie grade was exactly what I had prayed for it to be, on my knees by the radiator in the Abigail the night before I took the exam, solid and perfectly respectable, same as last semester's Crim grade. My Contracts grade had slipped ever so slightly from last semester, but if that's the worst effect chronic exhaustion and a panic attack could cause, I'll take it. My Civ Pro grade was the best it possibly could have been given my midterm grade, which meant that I'd aced the final beyond all hope. And Property: it was simply not possible. But there it was.

I cannot believe my luck.

"God did this," I squeaked to my husband.

"God didn't do this, you did this," pronounced my husband, who incidentally deserves mad props for coaching the hell out of me this semester.

But I've got to give credit where it's due. I learned last semester exactly how little it mattered to work one's ass off. There is no luck without work, but there is work without luck, so much work without luck. I did the work, but that in itself is meaningless except as a prerequisite. I have, quite simply, been blessed.

To everyone who supported me, everyone who sent waves my way, everyone who read my blog and posted words of encouragement and thought happy thoughts in my general direction; to every train that wasn't late, every electronic appliance in my possession that didn't break, every homeless person that didn't bother me when I walked to MUNI after dark; to every penny I found on the ground, every thread of good karma that clung to me, and particularly to the Source of all luck: thank you. thank you. thank you.

thus spake /jca @ June 12, 2003 04:21 PM