Do very well in University

I am in a rut gone bad or something.

I feel like my brilliance and my ability for all things school peaked sometime last Christmas and now…and now I am doing nothing.

Self sabotaging, handing in decidedly unbrilliant papers, the whole bit.

This is an important year, the final one, my honours thesis and all, everything I have been working for is now. I have 6 short months to go and I feel like I was done 6 months ago.

I keep trying to pull it together, every night I go to bed, tomorrow is a new day, I will get some work done, and then yup. Nada.

A B is NOT a BAD grade. PERIOD.

Well, I sure did feel utterly defeated last semester. I got a few bad grades, had a few sucky ass profs, and really from September 2007 until now I have not taken a school break. Technically, that looks like I am on my third year of schooling since it is 2009. I started in 2007, went through 2008 and now it’s 2009. REALITY, it is 17 months, which is 1 year, 5 months of straight school with no break. And as much as I want to take the summer off and just work and go to the beach, I probably will take at least a half credit this summer….

So all that culminated to make my FALL 2008 semester downright hard. As it sped by reality started to set in that in a few short months I would technically be in my 4th year, and that the goal of starting my honors thesis was rushing up to meet me faster than I could catch my breath (as I breathed into a paper bag)...

Meanwhile, I still have to finish my second semester. It just started and I hadn’t even been to all my new classes when I realised that even with not working (and having no income) I totally could not humanly do a good job and meet all my deadline. SO, I decided not to take one of my credits (hence why summer school again)....

Now, I am feeling a lot less stressed BUT. My hard work semester with sucky grades and suckier profs has still kind of defeated me. I have spent Christmas break thinking maybe I should just graduate and look for work. But really, a historian needs more education than just an HBA to be employable…so how useless is my degree at just HBA? Not to mention, I am totally not confident that I will actually write my honors thesis because I feel like a moron and like a studnet who hasn’t grown or learned much of anything – paper grades, not reflecting the brilliance I once though I possessed.

So I am walking around defeated, lacking confidence, and in a moronic daze just wondering what the bare minimum is to get this over with. I am also feeling jipped that I go to a small backwoods middle of no where no mid city for a minimum of 9 hours driving…..Which means, my access to primary resources is severely limited, my access to archives is negligent, my access to secondary sources of any value at all is limited to what is in my library, whether or not it can be shipped here on loan from another library (which means no browsing of the stacks), AND how fast I can read it because it can only be kept for 2 weeks and then it gets sent back, at which point I have to order it again.
I have been feeling severely limited in my access to sources as well as professors and academic choice. My classes after only two years at this university are on repeat, complete with repeat verbatim lectures, repeat textbooks and cut and past notes.

If I want to be a serious historian about things happening in Canada, outside my own back yard, how the hell am I supposed to do that when I am sooooo limited.

So defeated, no confidence, totally moronic and completely limited I am faced with my future. Which is bleak because I am not employable at this point in my city.

O woe is me.

BUT THEN, sure enough, this semester seems brighter. I dropped 1/2 credit to manage my course load. I am psyched about my new class and 2 of my full year classes, and well, just pretending in the one I hate.
I am fairly excited about the new and interesting papers I get to write. BUT – that limited feeling is a problem. So rather than a week before the paper is due, throw a fit and just churn out some crap I went to talk to my prof who I see 2X a week now….who I love BTW.

Turns out, my historicial interests totally match up with hers…and gee look at the library she calls an office of books non existent in our library stacks…she says, come persuse my shelves…she says you can do it, she says, good topic choice. She says, tell me about your crappy semester. She says oh no that is bad. She says that is not fair, she says, you are not alone, everyone else complains about them too. She says yes you are limited, but you are creative in your sourcs so you are learning something big university kids never will.

So then we talked about the impending doom that is my honors thesis. I told her I am terrified, intimidated, lost, and well, a little stupid. LOL She says, why is that all my smartest students are the most intimdating.. SHOCK, AWE?! You think I am smart? She also suggested herself maybe as my honors thesis supervisor, which is perfect because as I have begun to learn her research area and begun to get to know her, she is my frist choice as supervisor. Yaaa me.
THEN to top all that wonderful uplifting 20 mintues of talking off…she also is planning on talking to the chair of the OTHER department I study in, and thinks that instead of in my 4th year writing a history thesis, graduating and then doing a 5th year for a indigenous learning thesis, that in year 5 I should do a combined masters….
I kind of always planned on a year 5 – defeatist attitudes just got in the way.

SOOO…well, gee, wow. So I got home. Raring to go. Dived into homework. Diligently thought about my upcoming papers. And for the first time in 16 weeks, I brainstormed on my honors thesis brainstorm white board.

Thanks prof, will you ever know what that 20 minutes meant to me…

I got a grade back from him in the frist weeks of class and it was AWFUL, undeservedly so I felt. It totally ruined me, it hit me really hard and affected MOST of the papers I have written since then…then I got back an A from a class I am doing well in and I managed to put that good feeling effort into a bunch more papers. So what ended up happening is that A effort went into the last two papers I did for him. Still I have been feeling anxious, neverous, freaking out, migraines, stressed, can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t function. Waiting for grades. BUT, last day of class we find out our grades won’t come out until AFTER the exam.

SO, here I am 10 days prepping for an exam, not much else on my plate and all I can think of is this bastard failed me in another subject last year and here I am, setting myself up to fail again. I did that best I could…went in wrote the exam. It’s not my best work because I didn’t memorize names and dates, I memorised issues and examples instead. BUt I wrote for the whole exam time and didn’t feel like throwing up after..so it probably wasn’t terrible.

So I put all my stuff together and start to panic a bit knowing it’s grade time. I calmly walk over, although shaky from sitting for 3 hours. He actually knew my name for starters, remembered what I had written and gave me kudos and a nice job as he handed off my paper. Unlike the rest of the class my terrible grade wasn’t a glaring reality on the front page – this must be a good omen.

So I turn to the back page…IT’S A FREAKING B!! Which to any other prof, would be a FREAKINg A+! I’ll take my B and run with it, because that means a meadiocre grade on my final exam and the last paper I am waiting for will give me a FREAKING B- in his class and after the anxiety and difficulty of this semester, I am just humble enough to take that and FREAKING LOVE IT! Plus, I don`t really feel like my final and last paper are at all meadiocre, so I just might get a solid B at the end of it all.

THIS SEMESTER HAS SUCKED, and it just keep dragging on. And although some bad grades hurt my ego…I can keep on trucking with a B and a nice job from a tough professor.

Because apperantly I haven’t been recording my successes. I started my semester off with the first assignment in, first grade back was an A. But it was only worth 5% of my grade…so it’s hard to be overly elated about that A. BUT, its on a topic I totally don’t get so maybe that boosts the elation just a bit. Too bad that elation wave isn’t big enough to carry me through my C and into my next A. But…I GOT AN A. =)

I got back a C-...possibly deserved, possibly not. I feel really crappy about it because I had such a hard time motivating myself in the first part of the semester. Hard part is that I really liked the book I reviewed, I also learned a lot from it. But it was a huge freakin book and very hard to narrowly review. Also, I freakin hate writing book reviews.

Maybe there are some history profs out there who can share some insight…Gonna be honest, assigning a book review seems like a slacker assignment. Not so much for us but for you. That way you are guaranteed we read the book that you want us to read. Also, you get in an assignment worth whatever insane percentage you deem appropriate (I have from 5%-25% worthiness for 5 page reviews – what’s with the discrepancies teach?) It’s a short assignment all on a topic of your choosing. No room for creativity on the students part, easy for you to mark because you know the book inside and out.

Newsflash. I would rather write a 10 or more page reserach paper. I hate HATE group projects, yet I would rather do that than a book review.
Newsflash. I would rather you just assign the book as mandatory reading along with out textbooks, yes, I will read it. No, I don’t care if no one else will.

Find some other way to fill the hard work hole of marking. I am sick to death of writing book reviews. I am not that good at them, this is not the way in which I will use my history degree. HOWEVER, if I don’t get some research experience soon (hello I am in third year) I won’t be able to use my degree at all because I will have NO experience.

BTW, I have written like 13+ book reviews till now over the last 3 years and scored no less than a B, using the exact SAME format for every single one. Why now, do I get a C freakin MINUS?!

This will only last for the next 60 seconds, but I have to say, in this exact moment I feel more than a bit defeated and sure do hate school….but remember. There, my self pity is over. Time to pull up my socks and write…no not a book review…..AN EXCERPT REVIEW…woo.

Yet I am consciously sabotaging myself and not doing my work. I am staying on top of my readings but I have not done any assignments worth mentioning yet. I don’t like the topic of one of my mandatory classes and I don’t like the teaching style of the other one…so although I like my other classes I am feeling uber let down.

Also, I am seriously feeling the financial burden. I actually won’t be paying any of my bills in November and December and that weighs very hevily on me. Also, the financial situation of my entire household weighs very heavy on me because no one is in a position to even put a few bucks gas in my car let alone bail me out in any one of my various financial corners. It weighs heavy on me that the situation as it is now will remain so and likely only get worse because mom and gramps are not willing to change their situations to try and make it better. I feel like I can’t live like this and I was better off when I was at least making money with a few bucks left over…than I am now that I am in school. It is bringing me way down. And stressing me out and probably I am shutting down because of it. Because I live with my mom I cannot find a single scholarship that I am eligible in my region. I got the Canadian Millenium Bursary but they just take tht off the total of my provincial student loans, I don’t get that on top of what they are lending me.
I know I should be working harder. I have invested so much time and money this far but I can barely get out of bed let alone get motivated to function schoolastically.

Can’t even tell mom how I feel because of her gambling situation she got herself into a bad spot and feels guilty enough as it is. Don’t know what she’d do if I dropped this on her, it would just add more quilt. I am carrying most of my school financial burden on my own but she feels like she is the mom and is supposed to help me when I am in school…but she’s not.

Why did I choose this anyways? It’s not like I’ll be able to work in the same city as her, and I won’t have a big enough income if I move away to support myself and my loan repayments….It’s really desolate right now….

I know I should be working on the only thing I have, and that’s school but it’s too hard to even think about that stuff when real life is knocking on my door. How do kids who are broker than I am manage it?

I did fairly well in most of my classes last year and this summer but an really low grade totally killed my average. I am beefing up my transcripts with some extra credits so that that low grade doesn’t glare so much. Plus, I think taking more worthwhile classes rather than taking a regular course load worth of easy classes looks better. And I learn more…although expanding my knowledge base is not helping in narrowing a specialty but whatever, take it all as it comes.

I took a world religions class last year and I bombed it but did well in my other classes. I didn’t get the way the teacher was and everyone else did poorly also so I felt that my poor grade was a reflection of him not me.
So this year at a different university i took another world religions class…And I have not done so well. Here is what is strange. I am a history major….research is my thing. She wants me to write a 5 page essay based on the writing in our text books and I don’t feel that the textbooks answer the questions she wants us to write on. I mean really answer. Like it’s just not there to me. So I did some other reading, I pulled out some historical relgion books and some 101 questions on this and that and tried to get a better understanding. Evidently, because my better understanding wasn’t found in that stupid single textbook she feels it is wrong.
I argue that the thing about religion isn’t that it is wrong, it’s that it’s open to interpretation and and this is my interpretation, this is how I understood what I looked at when your precious textbook seemed to miss the point to me. I could undertake one of the more western religious but I chose hinduism and islam. I don’t care how I do, they are big, they are interesting and they have changed and are exceptionally open to interpretation.
And she says I have an apostraphe (spelling) problem. Meh, I say, when i write one paper teachers are adding in the stupid thigns because i didn’t use them and when i write another they are crossing them out. ok, that probably is my fault. It’s my weakness. It’s what keeps me from an A+ and at just an A. Except in the case of this stupid religion paper.

I really wanted to take intro to the bible next year, but if i kinda suck at relgious studies maybe i should skip it….

It seemed like the professors were more intense, I have grad students marking my papers, the classes are bigger and I am a second year student still forced to be taking first year classes because of the transfer – damnit it all I am above this. So I was very nervous because the first paper I handed in to the easy doing teacher came back as a 70%. 70% is what I get when I do nothing. I can write a freaking paper and not even read the book and still get a flippin B+. 70%!??? You have got to be kidding me, I am much much smarter than that. I didn’t bust my ass last year to be getting 70% in a first year slacker course, especially given the fact that I was super excited about that paper, I enjoyed the book and I wrote a first class book review that far exceeded the expectations of the classs. So then I find out that all the white girls I sit with got the same mark. Two of the think i am a genius and they were shocked and appalled I did so poorly. One of them I think is a genius and I am shocked and appalled she did poorly too!!!
So then I hand in a paper for another class…I worked a little less on that because I was like why bust my ass for nothing when I know I can do the same for less work….HA I got a freakin A- and I thought that THIS prof was harder than the first….

I am back on track and doing well, thank god I got that good paper before I wrote the 15ish papers I have to write this semester.