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I finally looked at my grades from this past semester. Doing so gave me huge levels of anxiety and I'd been avoiding it.
A
A
B+
I do wish I had a therapist to talk to about all the contradictory, frustrating, exciting, depressing, and otherwise complex feelings I have about that. Someone who's paid to let me say all these things that I know are ridiculous and take them seriously and who I don't have to worry about being a drain on because that's their job would be pretty good to have, I think.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that I did well. It will make returning to school easier, I think.
---
A friend on Facebook offered her congratulations on the grades and sympathies on the stress. I responded with thoughts that I'll put here too:
"Aw, thanks. In context, I really don't know how I feel about them. I feel like I'm doing well enough that maybe I should have stayed for the next semester. I feel like I'm fooling people into thinking I'm doing well when I'm not, even though I know that fooling people at a research-1 university who are subject matter experts on what they're teaching is not likely, yet I *still* feel like I'm getting a good grade out of sympathy or something, and it doesn't make any sense and it kind of tears my brain apart trying to process that, and in fact it makes me angry at myself as I think about it more.
I'm second-guessing myself for leaving, yet if I stayed, I don't know how I would avoid living in complete isolation and perpetual fear with my apartment and my work. Sometimes I think the more feedback I have that should make me self-confident, the more I doubt myself, and the more unconscious mental convolutions I have to go through to reconcile my real-life experiences with my self-image, and the more stress that process itself puts on me too."
A
A
B+
I do wish I had a therapist to talk to about all the contradictory, frustrating, exciting, depressing, and otherwise complex feelings I have about that. Someone who's paid to let me say all these things that I know are ridiculous and take them seriously and who I don't have to worry about being a drain on because that's their job would be pretty good to have, I think.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that I did well. It will make returning to school easier, I think.
---
A friend on Facebook offered her congratulations on the grades and sympathies on the stress. I responded with thoughts that I'll put here too:
"Aw, thanks. In context, I really don't know how I feel about them. I feel like I'm doing well enough that maybe I should have stayed for the next semester. I feel like I'm fooling people into thinking I'm doing well when I'm not, even though I know that fooling people at a research-1 university who are subject matter experts on what they're teaching is not likely, yet I *still* feel like I'm getting a good grade out of sympathy or something, and it doesn't make any sense and it kind of tears my brain apart trying to process that, and in fact it makes me angry at myself as I think about it more.
I'm second-guessing myself for leaving, yet if I stayed, I don't know how I would avoid living in complete isolation and perpetual fear with my apartment and my work. Sometimes I think the more feedback I have that should make me self-confident, the more I doubt myself, and the more unconscious mental convolutions I have to go through to reconcile my real-life experiences with my self-image, and the more stress that process itself puts on me too."
