March 23, 2001
Imperfect
Busybusybusy me! It's funny, back when I was in school before, I really resented times when I was particularly stressed and busy. Now I'm almost thriving on it, mostly because the things I'm busy with are things that I want to be doing. (So the logical question would be "Why aren't you doing it instead of writing a journal entry?" Yeahyeah.)A few weeks ago, I was taken with an urge to write my old therapist, the one I'd seen for several years when I first was getting divorced. She called this week, and after a brief conversation, I made an appointment to see her this morning. It's funny, but I really missed talking to her. I caught her up on a lot of things that have been going on with me, all the changes that have taken place. I talked a lot about school, writing, living at home... starting to see patterns in who am I and where I've been.
I confessed something that I've never written here, something that I don't know that I've ever even really talked about to anyone. What I'm about to say will probably gain plenty of eyes rolling at me. Some folks might even want to come smack me upside the head. I've talked about doing well this semester in school, but not about how well. The honest truth is that I haven't had a single grade that was below 100% on anything. I feel squirmy just typing that, like it's something to be ashamed of. The problem is, I still don't feel completely happy with my grades. Why? Well, for one thing, I still always got something wrong -- there was just usually a curve or an extra credit question to make up for it. In the case of my paper, the professor argued with me in the notes, which made me feel "wrong". Nothing has been PERFECT. Also, a part of my brain panics. When I got my paper and midterm back yesterday, my first thought was, "I can't keep this up. I'm going to screw up eventually."
Nothing is quite good enough, no matter how good it is. Perfectionism has always been a problem for me, a problem I didn't even see until I started therapy. In fact, I remember quite clearly during my first session with Nancy, when she told me I was a perfectionist. I laughed at her. "I'm too much of a slob to be a perfectionist. I'm too lazy." But the fact is, I am. When you get 103% on a midterm then spend time fretting about the one question you missed, that's a sign that something is way off-kilter in your head. Something is definitely way off-kilter in my head in that respect, and school seems to trigger the worst of it. I feel like I sound like a smarmy little thing, and I'm probably absolutely undeserving of sympathy in any way, shape, or form, but trust me. This isn't fun. Especially since I'm aware of how unfounded in reality those feelings of inadequacy are. I just can't make them go away.
I talked to her about going to grad school. The more I think about this, the more excited I am. The difficulty is that for a lot of very complex reasons, my mom is against it. She thinks I should just finish my bachelors degree and settle down and start my life for real, whatever that means. She thinks that grad school is a waste of time and money when I can get a perfectly good job with a BA. She thinks... finally Nancy stopped me in the middle of that litany and asked, "What do you think about it?" I think it's the best idea I've ever had. I think teaching college is the elusive it. I think I was meant to do this. My mom and I have a very different philosophy about life. I'm a head-in-the-clouds creative type, and she's so practical and down to earth. Maybe a little too practical, I don't know. I wonder sometimes if she has room for dreams anymore. She'd probably say she's too old to dream.
Everything else aside, if I don't stop weirding out over my grades, I'll never last long enough to finish grad school.
