Many colleges have counseling services and I'd advise you to seek them out ASAP. They can help you. Among the least important of the things they can do is help you try and get some extensions on your finals so that you don't have to concentrate on some stupid book less than a week after this terrible shock.
If your college can't help I'd still advise you to see a counselor. As someone who is married to a counselor, I assure you that they have skills that I will never match, especially over the freaking Internet. I do love the web, but sometimes it really is a lousy substitute for a face-to-face conversation with a human being.
I will confine myself to this advice: Your finals are unimportant, and your "milestones" an order of magnitude less important than that. Your well-being is important. Give yourself permission to mourn. You need to do it -- everyone needs to do it -- and it's unreasonable to expect it to be possible to shunt it off to the side and focus on work. And, in general, the people around you will understand this. The world will not come to an end if you take some time for yourself.
[Composed before I read kyro's post, which is precisely on point.]
Many colleges have counseling services and I'd advise you to seek them out ASAP. They can help you. Among the least important of the things they can do is help you try and get some extensions on your finals so that you don't have to concentrate on some stupid book less than a week after this terrible shock.
If your college can't help I'd still advise you to see a counselor. As someone who is married to a counselor, I assure you that they have skills that I will never match, especially over the freaking Internet. I do love the web, but sometimes it really is a lousy substitute for a face-to-face conversation with a human being.
I will confine myself to this advice: Your finals are unimportant, and your "milestones" an order of magnitude less important than that. Your well-being is important. Give yourself permission to mourn. You need to do it -- everyone needs to do it -- and it's unreasonable to expect it to be possible to shunt it off to the side and focus on work. And, in general, the people around you will understand this. The world will not come to an end if you take some time for yourself.
[Composed before I read kyro's post, which is precisely on point.]