One of my biggest fears entering college was that I wouldn’t be able to adjust to the rigor of the courses. I would fail out, become a bum, and bring shame to myself and to my family. I would prove everyone right who ever doubted my intelligence. But everyone assured me that I would be fine since I had always been a great student. I never had below a 4.0, and I was always in the top 5 percent of my class. Accelerated math, gifted programs, AP classes. You know how it goes. My classmates voted me most likely to become a millionaire in 8th grade (lol). I was the quintessential “smart girl”.
So how does the “smart girl” end up with a 0.91 gpa at the end of the first semester?
And what do you do when your biggest fear comes true? Everyone told you it would never happen so you weren’t prepared, but now, it’s your reality.
To answer the question, you cry. A lot. That’s what I did at least. You freak out. You have an identity crisis. You tell yourself that you have no worth or value. You become extremely depressed. You’re not the “smart girl” anymore. “Smart girls” don’t fail tests. So, you feel like you’re nothing. You’re a burden and a disappointment to your family who’s paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to send you to this expensive school as an out of state student.
You had one job: get good grades, and you failed at it, so you’re a failure.
Journal Entry from May 5th, 2019
“Just felt a random wave of depression. I feel like I’m going to have so much student loan debt. My GPA is horrible so I’m losing all the little scholarships I had.”
You dodge your family’s phone calls because you know they’ll ask about your grades which consist mainly of D’s. You tell yourself that your life is over. All those dreams you had, the vision you had for your life, it’s gone. You just want to disappear.
You tell yourself that you don’t belong at such a prestigious school. They made a mistake admitting you. You’re an imposter and everyone will find out soon. How did you sneak your way in?
You carry shame and anxiety around you everywhere you go. You isolate yourself from your friends and anything fun because your grades are so bad. You feel like you don’t deserve to experience joy.
And don’t forget, you feel that you not only let down your family, but you also set the entire black race back about 10 years. Black women too. Racism and misogyny is all your fault. Great job.
It all sounds ridiculous now, but that’s how I felt. It was easily the lowest point of my life. I felt stuck and hopeless. My life felt like it was over before it even began. I thought I might run out of tears from crying so much. But then, I met an angel.
I made an appointment with an academic advisor. When I arrived at my appointment, I was greeted by a black woman. After being surrounded by white people mostly since college began and being away from home and from the people that loved and cared about me, seeing this woman gave me a feeling of familiarity and comfort that instantly made me feel safe, seen, and held. I cried some more as I told her about my grades. She assured me that people struggle academically more often than you'd think.
She helped me create a schedule and switch to a major that might be easier for me to manage, and it was. I ended up graduating from UNC in four years with a 3.2 gpa, so know that if you’re struggling academically, it’s possible to turn things around. However, this is not the point of this story.
I made many mistakes that contributed to me getting to this super low point in my life. Let’s look at what they were:
Not speaking with an advisor before solidifying my schedule and making it much harder than it had to be
Not developing study skills and time management skills earlier
But more than any of those, my biggest mistake was:
attaching my worth to my academic performance
Journal Entry from December 19th, 2020
“I made all A’s Fall 2020. Everyone is proud of me, but I am not proud of myself. I now have a 3.0. I am less than content. Maybe because stupid grades don’t bring me real joy. What does bring me real joy?”
It turns out that I actually don’t enjoy school. I don't care about grades. I never did. I just did what was expected of me.
I’m not the “smart girl” anymore. She was not a real person. She didn’t think for herself. She didn’t do things that made her happy.
Of course there is value in education. I’m sure many people love school, college, academia, etc. I’m just not one of those people, and this line of thought should not be the only acceptable one to have. Many school systems and colleges, I believe, are deeply flawed scams rooted in, you guessed it, white supremacist patriarchal capitalist ideals. We are conditioned to place our worth and our value in how well we play a rigged game that will never work for us because it was never built to. And even when we do “succeed”, it’s happiness lite. It’s not sustainable.
I stopped stressing so much over my grades around junior year, but ironically my grades still continued to improve. I started reading books I’d always wanted to read but thought I’d never have the time to because of the mountains of school work I was assigned. I started discovering things that brought me real joy. Actual joy. Not the joy lite I got from getting an A on an assignment on a topic I cared nothing about. A failed test would normally bring me to tears and ruin my entire day, maybe even week. Now, I brush it off. I think,
“Who cares? This is all made up, and not made up for my benefit.”
I don’t rely on grades to bring me happiness, purpose, validation, or feelings of success. I create my own markers of success. I don’t invest my time and energy into corrupt systems that care very little about my well being because doing so is a recipe for chronic stress, unhappiness, and disease whether or not I “succeed” according to the white man’s standards. I choose peace.
I was wrong before. I had more than one job. I don’t exist to solely get good grades and a high paying job. My job is and always will be to be a kind person, to discover who I am authentically, and to create a life that feels fulfilling to me. This life doesn't have to include anything you don't want it to despite the pressure you get from those around you. I wish I would’ve known that back then. One thing that fulfills me is learning about things I am actually interested in at my own pace, which I never got to do in traditional school settings.
So after your biggest fear comes true, and after you have your breakdown, here’s what you do. You try and detach yourself from your ego, from external validation, from who you always thought you were. You take a step back, reevaluate things, question things, figure out what’s actually important to you, and you come back with so much more clarity, and so much more happiness than you ever had previously. Your life isn’t over. It’s just beginning, so don't get down, get excited :)
Thanks for reading! Please let me know your thoughts!
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