Growing up as the oldest child, I was always pushed to do better in school than my sisters. I was an A student all the way through high school. In college I’ve been an A/B student, and still that’s not so bad. My sisters, however, could get away with whatever the minimum was: You only need a D to pass – then D it is! My mom just accepted that the 3 of us were different people and that they may not excell the same way that I did. What sucks about the whole thing is that when I would get anything less than an A (B’s), my parents would freakout on me. It was acceptable.
When I went to college and received my first C, I almost had a panic attack. I felt like a straight failure. I failed one class in undergrad, and I just felt like my whole career was down the toilet. In grad school, I have been on the verge of panic every semester even though my GPA has been a steady 3.2 <- which isn’t bad by any means. However, I continuously feel like I am doing something wrong and that I will disappoint everyone because I’ll be a drop out.
Every mistake I make, maybe when I say the wrong word or pronounce something wrong, I ruminate on it for hours and I keep saying to myself “How could you be so stupid?”. Failure or mistakes are NOT ok in my book. But, the problem is that to err is human, right? We are all bound to make mistakes. It happens. It’s how you react to those mistakes that determines how far you’ll go. You have to make the mistake, reajdust your thinking, and try again.
I just wish that my parents would have accepted my mistakes, and told me that it was ok to make them every now and then. Maybe I wouldn’t beat up on myself like I do now.
She Who Runs Into Walls 