Thursday, September 08, 2005

The Perfectionist in me is Humbled

Gradual School is where you learn. Grades just shouldn't matter. I give myself this little speech every semester, and then I go out there and work my tail off to get the best grade I can.

I once told a psychologist who asked me about my perfectionist tendencies that I wanted to be a perfectionist, but I just wasn't quite good enough. I was really only joking, or so I thought at the time.

Gradual School has been the proof of that rule in my life. I work as hard as I can in every class I take in Gradual School. I do my very very best, and I usually get an A-. I don't get a straight up A. But I tell myself that that is okay, I am there to learn, not to get good grades.

There are even some semesters when I promise myself that I am not going to put so much pressure on myself to get A's. I have too much other work to do, or my family needs me, so I allow myself to not work so hard. But then when crunch time comes I find that I am so enjoying the subject matter that I don't mind the work, and I get grades that are one percentage point above a B+. Even when I am not killing myself I am still getting A's.

So, I am humbled, each semester that I am still getting A's in Gradual School. Part of me hopes each time that this will be the semester that I will actually get a B+, just so that the pressure will be taken off, but then when the grades finally come and I see that I have gotten another A or A-, I realize that I did work really hard, not because I was in some obsessive frenzy, but because I was so enjoying studying the topic I was studying that particular semester.

Don't tell mrangelmeg this, but I could keep studying stuff for the rest of my life. Well maybe not at $300 a semester hour though.

Pax

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tuition goes to half price once you graduate