I'm lonely. I need my grandfathers, but they're dead.
I have a bunch of photographs of my old schoolwork. I was looking through it because there's also a couple of photos of my friend in there, but it's just making me feel lonelier.
Why? Here's my old spelling list from 3rd grade:
acetabulum
acetaldehyde
acetanilide
acetylsalicylic acid
achlamydeous
abbevillian
acanthopterygian
acheulean
achromatopsia
acidophilus
There's also notes from my kindergarten teacher saying that all typical metrics are inapplicable and I perform at a 5th grade level. I'm sure this comes off like bragging, but that's not my intent. It hurts. I'm tired of being "special." I can't say I want to be "normal," with all that entails, but I hate this situation. Even when it feels good to be shown off to professors as "someone who thinks Professor W's honors class is too easy," it also really bothers me. I got made fun of for an hour last week because I knew a linguistics vocab word my professor (of linguistics at a top university) didn't know. I had to learn it in my (public) high school. It was required learning. This wasn't Vector being a dumbass and picking inapplicable study lists from the family's collegiate dictionary, this was Vector learning the required material and asking a question about it in college.
And that's the thing--I can't stop striving, because then I'd have nothing left. It's not like I could quit today and go live a different life. It's not like there's some other lifestyle waiting for me, where I hang out with friends and everything is fun. I've tried that sort of thing. It doesn't work. For one thing, wherever I go, I stick out like a sore thumb. For the other thing, when I'm not solving problems I go quite insane. If I don't have something to analyze, I get really crazy and depressed.
So, here I am, clawing my way through a heap of math majors at one of the top departments in the world. Here's Vector, who works 3-4x faster than the rest of them, rips through problems like they were nothing, and solves difficult theorems while brushing her teeth. Here she is, sitting here trying to get even farther ahead. Why?
I have no bloody clue.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9800769 times)