All last year I kept hovering on the brink of dropping out of grad school. Then when I finally manged to (miraculously) survive the whole year (mostly intact), I thought, “This is it. Beyond the point of no return. I have to finish the program now. Smooth sailing from here on out.”
Then two months ago the new term started, and everything was going along swimmingly. All my problems were in the past, graduation was a certainty, and my thesis project idea was approved with far less reservations than it had gotten last year.
Then came this week.
Right now I’m hovering on the brink of dropping out again.
I had a paper due in class Monday that I just could not for the LIFE of me do (see earlier entries). I finally ended up staying up most of the night Sunday to work on it, then went to bed with it mostly but not completely done, set my alarm for a few hours later then proceeded to forget TO TURN IT ON and as a result slept through class. After that I was scared to face my teacher because at 27 years old I’m still a gigantic wussie, so I didn’t even email her about it. After that I had even more trouble finishing the effing thing, so I didn’t get it done and turned in via email until Wednesday afternoon. Then yesterday I got an answering email from her informing me that as per the syllabus, I had missed the late deadline (by the next class time, apparently) and as a result my paper, which is worth a whopping 20% of our grade, would not count because she couldn’t accept it. So I will be getting a big fat zero on it.
FML.
And it’s too late to withdraw from the class even if that were an option; that date already passed.
I made an appointment to talk to her on Monday before class, but I’m not hopeful.
As if that’s not bad enough, I have a presentation on the paper and my research topic for the class on Monday, which I have absolutely NO idea how to do, and I really really suck at presentations. I get super nervous, and my voice dries up and gets all shaky and my brain freezes and stops working. So that would have been a giant mess even without this conflict with my professor which will make me even more of a nervous wreck.
And yes, I believe there is a conflict. She’s my committee chair for my thesis and I keep getting the impression that she doesn’t think much of me — I was getting those vibes from her even before this whole debacle. Which is fair, to be honest. I don’t think much of me either. But it doesn’t make dealing with her any easier. I have absolutely no self-confidence of any kind, so basically any sort of interaction with anyone, especially an authority figure or someone I respect is already really difficult for me, and if I know that they don’t like me it just makes dealing with them that much more nerve-wracking for me.
The really sad thing about this whole mess is that I really was doing quite well before I shot myself in the foot. And the really really sad thing is that this whole shooting-myself-in-the-foot thing is something I’ve been doing repeatedly since college. I almost didn’t graduate my senior year because I freaked out and couldn’t get anything done and almost failed one of my classes.
The reason why I keep sabotaging myself like this? Well, my amateur psychoanalytical opinion is that I don’t know how to handle success, and it scares me. I can do failure—I’ve been failing at things my whole life. I know how to do that. But success? I have zero experience at it, and I’m afraid that it will lead to responsibilities and experiences that I don’t think I can handle. So just when everything is going well and proceeding as planned, which will lead to increased responsibility, I subconsciously sabotage myself, thus placing myself solidly in the middle of the pack (or more accurately, closer to the bottom of the middle), which I see as a safe place to be. That way nobody expects anything from me and I can be invisible among the masses.
I have issues. Clearly.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I just dug myself another enormous hole, and this time I don’t know how to climb out the way I always have in the past.
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