Hopefully this is the right section of the forum for this. I'm at UPT right now and I'll just say things have been incredibly rough lately. I was doing pretty alright for the first few rides, but after that the cracks started to emerge in my GK and I found myself falling behind. A hook or two later I ended up on CAP and whipped myself into shape. I started going to the cognitive specialists every other day to assess and fix my study habits and work on in-flight stress management, I started studying harder and better, simming a lot more on my own time, chair flying better and more, having regular GK sessions with my IPs etc. Things were starting to really look up until my end of block flight to clear me for solo.
During that flight I made the silly decision to get distracted by my GPS and lost SA at a really stupid time. The rest of the flight had some errors, but was decent, however that was an instant hook and I knew it right away. Despite the outcome of the flight over all, the flight commander (my IP for the flight) actually mentioned on the gradesheet how much of an improvement he'd seen since putting me on CAP. Nonetheless, this triggered an 88.
The 88 ride was also fairly decent for the most part. There were some issues that would have made for debrief items with a fair if it weren't for the fact that suddenly I forgot how to land. I couldn't get them set up and kept going around, and a couple the IP had to go around for me because I judged poorly that I could land them. I had a very nice landing at the end of the flight and hoped it would save me, but it did not. Ride hooked, onto the 89.
My 89 flight with the commander was probably my worst since my dollar ride. A week of accumulated stress and anxiety finally took its toll and I simply could not perform. I was screwing things up that I've never had issues with before and it was just an overall disaster.
I'm now staring down a CR next week or possibly after the winter break and I'm absolutely gutted. I worked my butt off through 5 years of rejection, battling age limits, and a whole load of other obstacles to get to this point and watching it all slip away because of a series of small but ultimately stupid mistakes spread out over multiple rides is more painful than I can describe, especially after the effort I've put in lately to get my ass back in shape over the last 4 weeks. I was dealt a few unlucky hands here as well but I recognize that ultimately I'm to blame. The best day of my life was when I got the call saying I was going to be a pilot. My worst day was yesterday.
Sorry for the long sad post, ultimately I guess I just want to vent a bit but also ask for advice. Has anyone been in this situation and survived the CR, or seen someone else do it? Is there anything I can do to help my odds? I know my chances are incredibly slim this early in the syllabus and with a less than stellar gradebook, but I'm willing to do anything and throw whatever hail Mary necessary to keep this dream alive. I gave up my home, a 7 year long career, love, and much more to get to where I am today. If I lose this too, how do I stay positive in the face of what feels like a massive failure and a waste of my potential and half a decade of work?