I just got to read
Duke's and
Vector's soliloquies about the daily journey of misery that is being ahead of the course in college. The tragic irony of having the ability to give a damn and pay attention to the material, apparently far in advance of your contemporaries, without having the valedictorian's drive to test out of everything and rocket straight into the super-duper-honors program and never see those rubes again. I am not happy that you too are having the anger and apprehension that you are. I'm just happy to have some company, I guess.
"Positive-Feedback Loop" is definitely the way to describe my experience. I'm sitting in the back of the room, or the front in those classes where I can get away with asking questions every day, genuinely astounded that there's people not getting this shit. And somehow, I'm toward the bottom of grades, of those people who actually show up, because the anxiety over getting good grades and proving that I'm actually as intelligent as I believe I am overcomes my own last reserves of willpower, fretting to the last minute before blowing the whole thing off for the certainty of a solid C average, just by showing up. I don't know if I ever actually cured it. Maybe I just stopped giving a fuck, and realized I'd have to pull my shit together if I was going to graduate within the decade without bleeding myself dry.
If all the whinging I've done over the past couple years makes any more sense now, I welcome to my world and pity you for it. I hope my example can serve as a guide of what to overcome and why you should, because the only ways out are up and over, or crashing through the floor. I guess I accomplished something by graduating at all, and if I do have something to be happy for, it's that once you can hold that sheepskin in your hand, all the anxiety and pressures of the process vanish in a puff of smoke. Once you've got it, no one can take it away, and everything that you did or didn't do to deserve it doesn't matter anymore. Maybe that's something to look forward to, but I know it didn't mean much to me at the time, because it's a long road ahead.
And for anyone who thinks my ranting about being smarter than the rest of the class without the accomplishments to prove it sounds
elitist, well, you're God damned right it is. That cold vindication and increasingly bitter sense of superiority is all we have to hold on to.
In totally unrelated events, I went out and bought a $100 pair of boots today, before donating $30 to some kid's school charity. I like being able to do that with no more than an eye-flare.