I left the library yesterday feeling very defeated. I had spent the last three hours looking through archives to find something I could use for my project, but I came out empty-handed. There was nothing available online, which was very frustrating and anxiety-inducing. What if I couldn’t back up my points? What if my entire idea for the project was simply not possible without physically going to the archives? Did I waste the opportunity to go to physical archives because I underestimated how many sources I would need?

I stayed in bed this morning, not because I was tired, but because I was paralysed by the fear that I had failed, not even a week in. This is not something new to me; I have struggled with a severe anxiety disorder for almost seven years. I thought I had gotten somewhat over this, not fully, because it is always there, but I thought I had managed to get it under control. My fear of failure had doubled, as I hadn’t just failed in my research, but also in controlling my disorder.

It took a lot for me to drag myself to Rector’s Café to get some work done. I was so scared of not finding anything new again, I revisited sources I already had. I was looking through a magazine when I noticed that in the search bar, there was the option “collections”, which I had not noticed before. To my surprise, a significant number of the documents I couldn’t find yesterday were there. I ended up saving over twenty-six sources to one note, for me to look through over the next couple of days. These sources range from newspaper articles to activist manifestos and letters to parliament. I have not found everything I need, not even close. I still need to find government sources which do not seem to be available to me. However, the relief I felt as I noticed that, frankly, quite obvious feature of the online archive is massive. I know why I hadn’t noticed it before, I was too focused on what was in front of me, too blinded by the fear of failure and the panic that followed, that I did not notice this.

I do not mean for this to be a lesson; it is obvious that if you are panicking, you are not going to notice these things. I just wanted to share that my experience is not going perfectly, and it is still the first week. This blog post is more for me than for anyone else; it is proof that I am not useless, nor am I less deserving of this opportunity, because it isn’t always smooth sailing.