High Stress

Ever since I can remember I've been really overly concerned with my grades. Well, maybe not as much as everyone else but in college the concern has escalated tremendously. Since I was younger, grades were one of the only thing my dad would openly praise me for. I always felt SO GOOD about myself when he finally acknowledge that he was proud of me for being smart. In high school, I was perfectly content to get mostly A's with the occasional B. I was taking hard classes, I was working, I was trying to have fun. For some reason in college I had it in my head that I needed to get straight A's (and also, it was really easy). I've managed to achieve that goal thus far.

This summer I decided it take 3 classes online. I have to take two stupid gen-ed "exit" requirements for my university so I picked two that seemed the easiest for me to do.Well one of them turned out to be really difficult and the teacher is a horribly hard grader. She knocked off 20 points on my paper because I didn't include two periods in my reference section. Anyway I was consistently getting 80's on all my assignments and I had an 80 average in the class. I knew I wasn't going to improve and if I did get lower than an 80 on any assignment I'd have a C. I tried emailing my teacher for help and she ignored my emails. So I withdrew.

I know, I know. I shouldn't have panicked so much over a B, possibly a C. People get those grades all the time. But in my mind, I'd rather have the W on my transcripts and not have it lower my GPA than get a C and have my GPA suffer. I know I'll probably have to explain why there's a W when I apply to grad school but I'm hoping since it's such an insignificant class they won't even care. It has nothing to do with my majors.

And I don't even know why I let it bother me so much. WHO CARES. A W is not bad, plenty of people have to withdraw from classes. I'm graduating (hopefully magna cum laude) a year early with two, TWO, bachelor's degrees, a ton of research experience, and I manage to maintain a job among all of that. But I am never proud of what I have achieved because I'm always worrying about what could go wrong. I need to adjust my outlook on life. In 5 years school won't even matter to me whatsoever and I won't even remember what grades I got.

So in order to look at the positives in my future: I will be moving into my OWN place. I was worried for awhile my parents would make me live in the condo their renting but I'm slowly convincing them to just let me live alone. Then I'll have my freedom, my Mister will be back and forth living with me and we'll finally have privacy and our own kitchen(!), and I will hopefully be getting my first puppy. I just changed my schedule around for fall and have to do it again in a little bit which means I'll be able to work two days instead of one (my job only lets me work two days) and I could possibly not have to get a second job.

Overall there are way more things for me to look forward to then letting a stupid class overwhelm me and cause me to cry uncontrollably for hours. GET IT TOGETHER ALEX!