I go to UC Berkeley. I know, or at some point in my life I knew, I'm not stupid.
The last couple of days have been more than stressful, with finals looming and assignments from earlier in the semester being returned with grades I don't want and don't deserve and I've basically spent a lot of time questioning my ability to read, write, and even think.
People say Berkeley is a competitive school. And yeah, it was competitive to get into, and I have opinions on the whole application process that we can discuss another time, but I haven't felt the competitiveness on campus before. Maybe it's the classes I'm in. Maybe it's just me. But lately, while I've been in Australia, I have felt so much pressure to remain competitive. I think it's because the real world is about to be very real for me-1.5 years till graduation-and I'm panicking about how I can be competitive in said real world if I do poorly on this paper/in this class.
HOW AM I EXPECTED TO GET A JOB IF I CAN'T EVEN WRITE A DECENT POLICY BRIEF
WHY DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING
Being surrounded by so many intelligent people who are consistently doing impressive things makes me feel like I'm doing nothing productive. My closest friends are engineers, students at Princeton, getting internships that set them up for full time jobs, doing research that gets them published papers...one of my roommates at home started college at 16 and is well on his way to becoming a stupidly successful doctor. And I'm over here making flashcards on the beach and joking that my major is basically recycling.
I realize that this seems like an overreaction. I also realize that it probably is an overreaction. I go to UC Berkeley. I am miles ahead of so many people. Like I said, because I surround myself with such successful people it's really easy to feel unsuccessful.
Anyway, I'm basically having an existential crisis bought on by a single bad grade and I'm both giving in to it and trying to tell myself that grades don't matter and you can still get to where you want to be with a messy transcript.
(Dad don't freak out my transcript isn't messy. This is for dramatic effect. Sort of.)
I wrote that last week, when I was obviously quite a mess. I was just about to delete it and start a new, more positive blog post, but I think I'll leave it because I think it's a really accurate stream of consciousness write up of how very student feels every semester. I'm feeling MUCH better now though, after 2 and a half extremely productive days of studying. I have an exam tomorrow and another on Friday and I'm feeling pretttyyyyy good about them both at this point.
Last week was pretty great, despite the mental breakdown halfway through. It was the last week of classes! Thursday night the Pink Palace threw a good ol' American Halloween party. The PP + Reina dressed up as the 7 deadly sins and it was a super fun night.
Then Martha and I spent the weekend in Noosa at our friend Jonathan's family's house. Noosa is on the Sunshine Coast, an hour or two north of Brisbane. It was BEAUTIFUL. We took his family's boat out on the river, hiked through the national park, and watched people compete in one of the most competitive and largest triathlons in Australia.
It was a nice break before diving into studying the second we got back to Brisbane Sunday afternoon.
OOoh another cool thing, I'm finally running again! I did three and a half miles yesterday with almost no pain in my ankle or shins and IM SO HAPPY ABOUT IT!
This weekend should be fun too. I'm giving myself Saturday off from working and am going to a free Portugal. The Man concert in the city (Mom, look them up, they're great). I have an exam next week and one more the week after, and then I'm headed home to San Diego! 18 more days.
Happy 18th birthday Weston, miss you tons and wish I could be there to celebrate you turning in your college apps!
Back to le study.
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