it's become a total trope how kids who are set up with great SATs and high target grades in school end up crashing and burning as soon as they realise that perfectionism isn't attainable. i always had a pretty lit reading age, learned quickly, and (up until i was like 15) absolutely adored being pushed to succeed. i used to ask the teachers for extra homework and everything! i got a real kick out of making everyone proud, and at one point i legitimately wanted to look at oxbridge!!
but that was because it made other people happy, and they were proud of me, and i built my happiness from them being proud of me. as a weird self-experiment, i didn't really try at my gcse's and ended up being really average. i'm not sure why i did it really, i think it really freaked my parents out because all they wanted was for me to set myself up the best i could for life - and i was far more concerned with basing my identity off something other than good grades. i was trying to find independence from basing my emotions off their pride, but it ended up sucking because what i DIDN'T realise was that i would still be haunted by the fact i have really underwhelming gcse's at the age of 20.
i literally will lie there at night sometimes and feel absolute self-loathing over some grades that ended up having no baring over my future at all. i don't like it when they're brought up in conversation because i feel like i have to attach a little disclaimer (yeah they're not very good but i am clever i promise don't you dare think i'm not clever) as if a random stranger is going to judge my entire character worth based on my gcse grades. no idea why it matters to me so much. why do i want to be clever so bad?
and then i tried really hard at my a-levels and got...really normal grades. i got A B D and cried on results day because i wanted A B C like that means ANYTHING at all, like my couple of lost marks in a-level art was worth anything at all. and then i was NORMAL! i wasn't 'gifted and talented', i wasn't 'clever but apathetic', i was trying my best and getting really normal grades. i wasn't anything special anymore, even when i gave it my all!!
total reality check!! really odd. grappled with what i wanted to do with my life for ages, because all the careers i was looking at people said i was 'too clever for' like what the fuck does that even MEAN.
and now i go to a university that's pretty average, taking a course that people roll their eyes at because 'what're you even gonna do with a creative writing degree anyway'!! and it's a constant check on my silly ego for even thinking for one second that any of it even mattered. i would've hated oxbridge, like, they'd all have been rich tories. what was i even thinking?
the happy middle ground is somewhere in me being at peace with grades having nothing to do with who i am, but also trying harder than life itself to get a First just so i can have my parents cry at my graduation and be all proud of me. but now i know it's for them, and not really for me. i know i could be happy with or without a degree, i know i could go down a career route and hate it and double back on myself and do something else entirely!!
i am learning to be happy with being wasted potential. fuck the capitalist idealisation of productivity measuring success anyway. i'm going to travel the world and write in the sun
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