Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Warning: the following post is being written more for the therapeutic benefit I get from sorting my thoughts out than for your reading pleasure, so it's a rambling mess. I suggest you don't try to read it.
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So. Now that I'm well into this week (which hasn't hit an all-time low of suckiness... yet), I think I can reflect on the emotional roller-coaster ride of last week.

A major reason why I've been stressed out is because of--yup, you guessed it-- colleges. I think talking to my uncle last weekend and visiting Columbia this weekend only heightened my anxiety about college and life in general. It seems to me that getting where I am now was always somewhat of a struggle... albeit, somewhat of a self-imposed struggle because I procrastinated like no other, but even getting past that procrastination is always a struggle, so I'm still getting to the same point in the end. Anyways. Well, these aspects of my life were highlighted by all of last week. First, I told my uncle that I was interested in med school but that I wasn't so sure if that was what I wanted to do because I didn't want to deal with another four years of grade haggling and ultracompetitive peers... and he basically told me that he didn't have that problem, and that, while not easy, he didn't think it was incredibly difficult to manage a gazillion activities (including organizing national tours for his orchestra) while managing to graduate in the top 10% of his biochem dept at Harvard (which is what med schools basically look at I guess). So that totally made me feel like crap, even though I know he didn't mean to. And when I went to Columbia on Saturday, I asked the tour guide whether she felt any of her pre-med friends were having trouble balancing the ridiculous amounts of humanities core classes with their degree requirements... and she said it wasn't a problem. Again, this is something that I had a major problem with junior year, and this year as well (though not as much). And it begins to make me wonder whether I'm doing the right thing, considering being a bio(chem) major. I find it much easier to do well in Model UN than in science classes, but at the same time I can never manage to be the top student in either area... and I find a career in law rather distasteful (unless you're going to become a human rights advocate or proponent of some other cause that badly needs attention). On top of that, while biology is really the only science that I've truly enjoyed learning about, I absolutely dread studying for it because it can get so boring... and I suck at chem and physics. So I just feel a general sense of inadequacy, like I'm trying to fit myself into a group of elite students where I don't really belong. In short, I feel rather stupid these days. But then again, looking at my report cards, I began to realize that if I don't get to go where I want to, it really will be my fault. I think I tried really hard throughout all four years of high school, but there are times when I didn't try hard enough. Like junior year, I definitely didn't balance my time well... and second quarter this year, and for midterms, I totally slacked off (it was pretty bad even by my standards). So then it boils down to 1) not being smart enough to whiz effortlessly through every class and 2) not having the determination to make up for what I lack in sheer intellect. I can't control 1, but I can control 2. And that's where I'm beginning to hate myself.

Not to insult anyone that's going to go to Rutgers, but I really don't want to go there. It's a great school in its own right, but I just have this sense of total depression that that my four years of hard work will go to waste. I mean, I could have gone on so much less. Sure, there's the whole money aspect of it all (without working this hard, I probably wouldn't have gotten that much $), but I guess I'm just showing how spoiled I am when I say that that's not enough. On the other hand, my parents have placed me in a position where they basically told me I couldn't apply to anything else other than major reach schools for me, with the exception of JHU and NYU, both places that I'm a bit iffy on right now, for monetary reasons (and rightly so). If I do really intend on some kind of grad school, there is no such thing as too much money. *shrug*

I think I discovered the root of my unhappiness this week. While I wouldn't say that my four years in high school were overwhelmingly depressing, there have definitely been some low points. I realized, not for the first time, that I've been working partly out of a sense of obligation... both to my parents, but most importantly to myself. My parents moved me here in part for high school because they thought it was more competitive than my last school... and although I was never particularly attached to the last one and didn't really protest the idea of leaving, I did have friends and at the very least familiar settings that I felt much more comfortable in. Coming to EB, I had to deal with a whole new set of people and an entirely different school culture (which I detested then and which I still detest today)... and so I think I felt that if I was being placed in this situation that I should make the best of it and make all my emotional struggles (which, minor as they were, hurt nonetheless) worth it by improving academically. And to be honest, I did way better than I probably could have done in HP. But the way I've gotten to this point has made me someone that I don't really like (from an academic perspective at least) and makes me wonder whether a life in academia is really the smartest path for me. Being placed into such a competitive environment, I've become exactly the same as many of the EB people I initially disliked... but I feel almost that that's the only way I could have ever gotten to this point and the only way I'll really achieve my personal best, as obnoxious as it sounds. But this same source of motivation is also a major source of stress, because you can never control how well others do... only yourself. And even that seems out of reach sometimes... which is when I begin to hit the next level of lows regarding my intelligence.

In the end, I could settle for much less and probably be happy. But I'm not really sure if that's what I want to do. I've (unfortunately?) been distilled with this notion that I have to go out and be more than middle-of-the-line... and I don't know whether to thank or hate my parents for it. I mean, I could go to Rutgers Pharmacy, do something that's distantly related to what I think I like, be out, and earn a cushy living... but I guess it's an ego thing that keeps me from doing that. I don't even know what I want to do, but I do know that I want to be happy AND good at whatever it'll be... and everyone says that you don't have to know now, but I'm getting such mixed signals that I don't know what to do with myself.

*sigh*. I hate APs and such... I want to be a real second semester senior.
--posted by M @ 12:54 AM | 0 comments

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