Anxiety is setting in again.
I'm worried about my chances at the univiversity and I'm not sure if I'm choosing the right direction.
I'm scared of failling and I'm angry that there hasn't been anybody to prepare me for this.
I'm not even sure where to turn to, for advice.
I still have half a year, but I already fear for my life :/
Well, all I can say is: at least we're in the same boat.
I've gotten so much more anxious since I started college... it feels like I never do anything at all for pleasure anymore, and whenever I'm just sitting around relaxing I feel guilty. Or when I'm doing easier classwork instead of getting right on the hard stuff, I feel guilty. Or when I'm sitting on the bus without having one of my readings out, I feel--you guessed it--guilty.
I end up feeling like an uneducated idiot much of the time, because I hardly know anything about anything, I'm behind in one of my classes, I may end up having to retake a couple of classes and goodness knows that that's ridiculous...
Dammit, I miss the time when I felt like my knowledge level was not directly correlated to my societal worth, and that I had value as a person outside of my ability to argue esoterica that no one cares about outside of a status symbol. I'd like to learn for the sake of learning, rather than learning to make a grade or learning to escape some fear of judgment or learning because I want to escape the stereotypical female fear of mathematics. I love math. Sort of. I still want to be a professor of some stripe. Sort of. My cousin is currently studying to be an anthropologist... another is working to become a philosopher or poet. As for me, I'm just sitting here being stupid. I'll probably end up fulfilling the grand social role of being someone's terrible snarky wife, and someone's dissatisfied, angry mother. Whoopie-dip. We all know how much everyone values that career option.
And I can't cut the feeling that someone other than me deserves this education a lot more. Someone who would work harder, be smarter, be more valuable to society instead of yet another damnable idiot who can't figure out her priorities.
Vector, you're a great person. There's no way around it, you're just a great person.
The only thing that needs a little changing, is your perspective. I feel it is wholly unhealthy and unwise to focus only on your future and your goals. I say this because, in a way, you're measuring yourself by an abstract metric, which you feel guilty to not live up to. You feel inadequate if you aren't achieving the things you feel you should be achieving.
I just want to tell you that that is a silly notion. You're a great person AND you do great things everyday. I do mean what I say with 100% certainty. You do great things. Every single day. It's only a matter of being able to identify these great things; because once you do, you will also know that you are a great person.
Allow me to highlight some of these great things that you do:
- Even in your leisure time, here on Bay12, you fill the forums with the knowledge and maturity that only you possess.
- In the happy thread, you beguile us with tales of your constant in-flow of achievements. You tell us how hard you're working, and all the amazing things you do.
- In the Mafia sub-forum, you've become a player to be known and feared. You have become well-respected in the community, just through your leisurely playing.
It's your actions which are done everyday, that make you great.
Now, I'm not asking you to change your whole way of thinking for me. However, it pains me to see you so frequently melancholy, so would you mind doing me a small favor?
It's nothing big, I can assure you, the same thing was suggested to me by my teacher, which I decided to follow, and surely enough, I have become a happier and more optimistic person.
The favor is: every morning, when you get up and look in the mirror, just smile at yourself. There doesn't need to be any repeated rhetoric or special lines to say to yourself, just smile at yourself.
No matter what you think, I can assure you, it works. With that smile in mind, you can focus on the tasks set before you on that day, and nothing else, with a mind full of optimism. I think you'll find your daily accomplishments to be much more fulfilling, you'll be much happier, and you'll realize that you are, in fact, a great person.
I wish you the best of luck Vector.