rigor mortis

This is a stressful time. Now, those of you who know me know that I don't get stressed very easily. So this is as much a surprise to me as it undoubtedly is to you. Am I out of my depth for having signed up for the courses that I have signed up for? Looking at it objectively, I don't see any reason why I should think so. Online communities was a pain, but it's over, and I'm not losing sleep over the possibility of losing a letter grade on account of Tanisha's duplicities. Software analysis and testing is an out-of-these world excellent course that I feel invigorated for having taken, so it's not that either. Operating systems could prove a little exacting, but I've been through worse before. Heck, I've been through FIITJEE. So maybe it's the lab. The professor has tasked me with writing rather a detailed report of my contributions at the lab (backed up with numbers, observations, etc.) to fulfill the grade requirement for the course. Now, numbers have to come from somewhere. They don't just grow on trees. So I'm going to have to spend some time conscientiously fabricating them with an eye to verisimilitude. But the professor also said that he's going to be asking the opinion of the PhD student I've been assisting in deciding my grade. Now, W. knows all. It wouldn't escape him which numbers were real and which were fabricated. He also knows what I have done and what I haven't. I have no idea myself whether I've done what I was expected to do or if I've let W. and the professor down somehow - the way I let the compilers professor at UIUC down when I absconded shortly after committing to his research group. In my defense, I wasn't getting paid or anything, so my participation back then would have been strictly voluntary. Now, I don't fancy myself a saboteur, and I don't want to take credit for having sabotaged the compilers professor's research, though I imagine he and his students would have been left not a little confused when they came to terms with the fact that a student who had been given the chance to take part in something great had promptly thrown away the opportunity after the first meeting. It's not something I'm proud of, though I should perhaps have recognized the signs. I'm just not cut out for this research business. That's for people like W., Speedy, et al., who are in possession that je ne sais quois that separates PhD students from dilettantes like me. Now, I'm still not sure whether this little exorcism was the result of stress. I'm only going on the missed alarms, the surpassing hebetude, and the thoughtless stress eating.