"Can you say 'burnt out'?" - An email revelation

I think this will count as the "school" topic I wanted to blog about from my short list. It is an email I sent to my sister just now. Enjoy!

There comes a day in a high school student's life where she really finds out what kind of person she is, how great her friends are and that she doesn't really have it that bad. Last Thursday just turned out to be that day for me.

(Like the intro? I think I may blog this someday!)

Anyway, a whole slew of emotionally swinging stuff happened on Thursday and for the most part, it sucked. It sucked really bad. The bad news started in English class first thing in the morning: My teacher finally gave back a whole bunch of essays and assignments dating back to almost November. I failed a minor "1984" quiz (48%) and did rather poorly than I thought on my work portfolio (70%). These didn't phase me as much as the marks I got for my essays, one comparing the movie "O" and "Othello", another comparing Sinclair Ross' The Painted Door and Anton Chekov's The Brute, and the last one explaining why oligarchical collectivism worked in "1984". The latter essay I had worked so hard on and pre-wrote and outlined...only to get a reluctant 2.5/5. The second essay on The Painted Door and The Brute I worked on equally as hard and only got 4/10. What's worse, the one I *didn't* focus on at the time, the Othello one, got higher than both, 6/10! I wasn't even frustrated or mad at the time because I was so shocked. My teacher never marked me spectacularly well on my previous essays but he usually liked reading mine and commented so. If this was a ploy to get us used to post-secondary marking levels, would it have killed him to start off tough, not suddenly become English Professer 101 at this critical and most emotionally fragile time of the year?!I finally got my English mark going into the departmental exam as well (which is Monday morning, eek!). **58%** That means I have -29%- going into the departmental. That means the absolute highest I can get for a final mark (after getting 100%) is 79%. You can probably imagine how I was feeling. And to top it all off, my calculus teacher gave us back our 3rd module in Calculus: 50%.

That was it. I was done. As I dragged my sorry ass to Liz's car chanting "Burn out...burn out...", I collapsed to my knees in the snow, feeling so low. I was so angry; I bashed Liz's dashboard and sobbed, frustrated that I was going to end up "just another burn-out smart kid" I felt so ordinary, so dime a dozen and I guess that's what made me the most mad. I kept my standards too high, took onto myself too much stuff and I just fell off the cliff, like countless high school progical and university hopeful washouts.

My self-bashing-ness lasted a good 20 mins in Liz's freezing car (the windows got all fogged *lol*) but Liz was really great getting me out of it (not to mention she convinced me to come back to school in the afternoon!) She correctly pointed out that I took too much onto myself because I didn't trust anyone would take it up again. But, really, can you blame me? This town just sucks the enthusiasm out of you and doing something helpful that you enjoy became doing something helpful as a necessity because no one else will do it. I guess I always knew I was an over-achiever and partial perfectionist, but with being around very goal-oriented people all the time those particular aspects never seemed extraordinary. I had always thought I had no right to complain about anything anyone else would complain about, because I know there's always someone somewhere in a worse situation than me. Like school; I can't complain about my marks, there are people working their asses off to get half the marks I get on a bad day. Or Mom, how her pressure gets on my nerves sometimes; I know a couple people who would kill to have a parent who cares about their scholastic career as much as Mom does. I guess that all that "don't-complain-won't-complain" stuff finally caught up with me in a big way.

I'm pretty sure my breakdown covers the next 3 weeks of exams and then some ^_^ But now I'm good and I'm making sure I have a plan to fall back on if my English exam doesn't go as well as I want and need. Mom's agreed to let me take English 30 next semester through Aurora College and Liz's mom (campus president) has me on the short list in case I do. I know I'm going to have the time to do an extra course (20 spare periods!!) and if I have a chance to do better, I will! I've been meaning to tell you about all this drama since it happened but I've been studying hardcore for all my departmentals, English in particular, making sure I go into the exam with the most knowledge possible!

I'm going to go, I spent way longer than I meant to writing this! Love you and Cliff lots and lots!

~Marie