Bohemia Bunny

Not much of me left

April 21st, 2007 by lynnylchan under School Life

Can attacks to one’s self-concept also deplete the ego and its regulatory effects?

I don’t know who I am any more. I don’t know where I went. Something somewhere has gone horribly wrong and I don’t know how to fix myself.

I just got a C for my lab report. I knew it was a p.o.s. when I handed it in, because it was done while sitting in a darkened lecture theatre, waiting for rehearsals to end. It was my own stupid fault for taking the easy way out and cutting corners, instead of taking the time and effort to make it more detailed. While others were frantically cutting words to make the limit, I was looking for things to say to fill up space. That was already an indicator that something was wrong.

And sunk-cost effect. If I had started earlier, I would have had enough time to change my thesis statement and find empirical data to support that. But lack of time meant that I stuck with my admittedly shaky thesis. My statistics were never very strong, so I shouldn’t have tried to be funny and run my own analysis. Foolhardy, I think the word is.

I’ve never received such a bad grade, ever. The previous record was a B- for a term paper. Two, in fact. But C! Not even C+, but C! The letter seems hunched over, ashamed of itself, as it glows at me on the screen. My breath catches in my throat. I knew it was bad, but I’d never expected it to be THIS bad.

I feel like I should cry, but the tears ain’t coming. This is getting to be a worrying trend, this lacrimal deficiency. Does it make me any less human if I’m unable to cry? Do I even want to be human any more? It’s a huge burden, being responsible for myself. Why fight the current, why strive, why struggle? Why not be carried along on the eddies of life, biding my time until the merciful end arrives?

To counter Nietzsche, there is chaos in my soul, but it will consume me before it births a dancing star.

I should never have invested so much of myself in my academics. For so long I have defined myself by my grades and my achievements that when they take a hit, so does my self-concept. Self-esteem rises and falls, I can deal with that. But when the very notion of who you are has been questioned: what then? Who am I, if I do not go on to do Honours? Who am I, if I can’t achieve the 2nd upper that for so long has been a perfectly reasonable and achievable goal? Day by day, the spectre of a job in the service industry looms larger, more concrete, no longer just a flippant joke but a serious consideration.

This shitty year just keeps getting worse and worse.

*Edited 23rd April*

I just read through the comments for my lab report, and I’m now amazed at the generosity of my lecturer. I severely underestimated the shittiness of that lab report. Firstly, I committed the fatal flaw of misreading the instructions. Yes, that’s right. The page limit was inclusive of the references and title page, not exclusive. OMG im teh n00b. Because of that mistake, he regarded my final paragraph and references list as missing since they were over the page limit. Urgh.

There were some formatting problems in that I didn’t put in a running header and a little title at the corner, but I doubt that’s the biggest concern. He took more issue with my “ridiculous” statistical analyses (see, I knew it) and indeed, with my overall thesis statement. Not only was the evidence shaky, he said the thesis wasn’t even related to the module. I dispute that it’s not related, after all we are covering individual differences, but he’s the one with the red pen, so.

I’m totally astounded by my inability to differentiate between “inclusive” and “exclusive”. Not the first time I’ve done these kinds of heroics. I had better open my eyes wide tomorrow and read each question through 3 times before even writing a draft.