i am an overachiever.
there. i admitted it.
isn't admitting you have a problem the first step to recovery?
i suppose that some (alright, perhaps most) would not consider being an overachiever a problem, yet when you feel ill because all your frustrations and worries about grades make your stomach declare war on you, that could be a problem.
just maybe.
or when you are upset for days simply because you missed a question on a biology test because you put the wrong answer on the answer sheet, when you had the correct answer on the test, thus preventing you from achieving the ever-elusive perfect score of 100% on a test put forth by a teacher everyone dreads and claims is increadibly difficult.
maybe it's just the freshman mindset that made him difficult because quite frankly i had no problems.
maybe the real secret of being an overachiever is those that are bored enough to be one, are one. or at least that was the case with me in grade school. i had read any book of interest to me in our relatively small library, and for simple boredom was rereading several of them. i was the kind of kid who lived for those scholastic book order things to come around so i could go home and plead with my mom to buy me fresh material, that i would then reread in my boredom. i would then complete my assignments... out of boredom.
had my k-8 school library boasted authors such as rand, dostoevsky, or kierkgaard, perhaps i would have simply gone on some philosphy spree and faked my way into seeming so smart that everyone would leave me alone in a corner to read by myself. the teacher would have tested me out of fourth grade, and i would then go to high school where everyone would marvel at the kid who should be swinging on a swingset rather then toting books and applying to famed liberal arts colleges on full-ride scholarships.
okay, i did read a lot and they did leave me alone (however, that was why i read alot, it was better than doing nothing and hearing the insults thrown around in your general direction. you get a book, you zone out.)
i suppose that i got used to everyone expecting me to be smart.
huh. whatever that means.
'smart' is a word that i really don't like. so many meanings.
what happens if ther person expected to be smart isn't really smart and they feel as if they are just faking it all? is it possible to fool everyone into thinking you're a good student when inside you're just a dunce?
ah well. at any rate, you end up on a dead-end road, convinced that you're nothing, headed only God knows where, and are becoming unsatisfied with outr grades.
high school meant to me actually having to try. the transition from my parents pressuring me into all A's was seemless: i went from an above average student who teachers thought should get all A's instead of the peppering of the ever-horrific B's that showed up... perhaps that was my way of rebelling. "i don't want to try, i'm going for mediocrity, take that! teach you all to call me stupid again, i'll be both! isn't that what you want? for me to be pleasantly stupid and smart?"
and then i went to an absurd, perfection driven kid whose parents have long backed off of the entire grade thing because she pressure herself enough and gets upset over a B in any assignment whatsoever.
i thought that post had dierection before i wrote it...
now it's just...
pointless.
kinda like how i feel.
hmm.
all of my thoughts, thought in one sentance, seem to take forever to get out because they get lost, and then require me to dig everything else out in the process or finding them.
moving on...
well, to begin again...
i have trouble with being an overachiever. you feel good when you do well, however even when you do well you don't feel good enough...
i suppose that is why i seem to strived for perfection.. even thought i don't want to.
you do well, yet you do simply 'well' for so long that it means nothing to you. you have to keep toping your previous achievements over and over again...
you get a B, it's a bad day, you get in the truck at the end of the day and sing as loud as you can to some song thta always makes you feel better. you remember that you are alive, that it's no big deal and move on.
your college chemistry teacher say you are taking too long on a test and takes it away before you have barely scratched the surface on the last page... you cry all over the test at the ten minute warning (and it is hard to circle a letter D when that letter is barely ledgible because it's soaked) and can't even see the last page of the test because of your tears. you then feel pathetic (the worst insult i give, with variances to show the degree of patheticness.) and the bring yourself together, only to realize at one minute left that you know how to do ALL of the last page however it's a long set of redox and therefore you do not have time to finish more that writing the equasion.
you gather yourself together.
walk out.
and are stopped by your spanish teacher.
who reacts to grades the way you do, so that when she sees your face she automatically says "grades?"
yep. (that's all that question needs. i never say yep. just fits.)
and then you learn that once grades may kind of be important, however don't ruin your life over them. Once oyu go to college, the A student, the B student, the AB student and the student who's grades love rollercoasters all get the same...
peice of paper.
just a piece of paper.
it's a bad day, you get in the truck at the end of the day and sing as loud as you can to some song thta always makes you feel better. you remember that you are alive, and cry all the way home.
you get your test back.
you don't have time to cry because while your worst nighmares of getting a... not a B or A come true, a friend got a worse grade and didn't have the spanish teacher pep-talk. so then you make her laugh. give her a hug. talk about various anything's. talk about why grades are important to you/her.
it's a good day, you overcome and help someone else while you're at it.
yet why is it that such a thing is so important?
i suppose that i just want to be good at something...
anything that defines who you are.
i do something, and i don't count the number of people i'm better than, i count how many people are better than me.
after a group quiz in chemistry the other day, i was told "you don't give yourself as much credit as you deserve"
i...
think that was a compliment. the best one i've gotten.
better than "you're amazing." "you're soooo smart!" or "what do you mean you're not good enough? you're one of the smartest people i know!!" (smart... i don't like that word...)
it means to me: you're good, you just don't see it. i know that you are capable of more than you think.
i just hope that other people of the overachiever persuasion do not try to achieve perfection...
it's not possible, and even when you know that, you still strive for it.
stubborn mind.
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