on being average
When I was studying for my college entrance exams, I had a review center (cram school) teacher who absolutely could not stand being average.
"Don't be average," she would say in that particular tone of voice. It was part of how she pushed us. She believed we could be above average, and we were. We could be brilliant, and we worked until we were.
In the end, the pandemic prevented us all from taking our entrance exams, but her words stuck with me anyway. I passed all my college applications in the country and chose the one I'd wanted to get into since I was a kid. It was expected of me: I'd come from a reputable high school, known for exacting excellence from its students. I don't want to be a pompous asshole and say it was easy, because it wasn't. It was hard. The first few years, I merely survived. Eventually, I thrived.
But as all gifted kid burnout stories go, that doesn't seem to be the case now.
It's the end of the second semester of my second year in college, and my professors are starting to give out exam scores. Canvas' box plot feature feels like the worst thing that's ever happened to me, because now I can see that I'm perfectly, horribly average. Scores in the 70s or 80s, exactly the mean or median. A few below average. A few above average; high, even. But overall, my grades are just...average.
As I write this, I can still hear my old teacher's voice ringing in my head. Don't be average. I'm afraid I have to disappoint her this semester, as I did in all the ones before it. I'm trying, I swear, but it doesn't seem to be enough. It hasn't been enough for two years, and I honestly don't know what to do at this point. Switch majors? Switch universities? Quit STEM and embrace my first love, the humanities? But I can't do that. My scholarship contract, the one I got when I was still above average, doesn't allow it.
I shouldn't even be writing right now. It's 11 p.m. and I have an exam tomorrow that I'm still not done studying for. I should be stressing. I am. I should be on the verge of a breakdown. I am. I should be working like there's a fire lit under my ass. I am not. The fire is burned out, because I'm burned out. I just want to give up.
(Which, unfortunately, is not an option and never will be, because no matter how tired and demotivated and burned out I am and how many times I say I'm gonna throw this exam, I cannot accept failure.)
I guess that's my cue to go back to my notes. Again. I wish I could end this post with a self-accepting realization that it's okay to be average and it's okay to not be the best, but I'm not at that level of enlightenment yet. All I can say right now is college sucks.