Face Up

Having said that, grades are not everything but they are the most superficially in-your-face thing that I can deal with. There was a long period last semester when I asked myself what I was doing, whether I was suited for an academic life. Last semester was horrible – the constant string of B-minuses was crushingly depressing because I had worked at my essays. Each one, as far as I was concerned was a dialogue between me and the module and the measure of not only how much I understood from the module but a measure of me as a person. When you are a student and your life revolves around academia, grades while not everything, is at least a way of measuring oneself. That you, after 3 years still fail to be:
a) clear
b) organized
c) pertinent
d) reflective/insightful

is a crushing thing to hear.
I chuck those essays aside. And that, I quietly tell myself, is yet another sign of inherent failure of me – not as a student but as a human being. How will I improve?? Can I improve? I am on an inherent and unstoppable train further into failure because I dare not face up to that B-minus. I cannot read it without feeling disappointment, without feeling inferior and insufficient – in discipline and hard work and intelligence. And I dig a further hole because I can’t face up to how I will never be disciplined, or organized or insightful enough.

I am scared of failure – both how it is manifest outwardly as a grade and how it might be a sign of inward failure of me as a person, and that fear is so crippling that I can’t even look at it. This time round, I have yet to look at it closely either. Can I chuck it aside? I might and I will tell myself: you can do better than that. But, as a person I cannot do that when I haven’t even seen what is wrong about it. So, tonight I will look at it. And though the grade isn’t everything; it is a lot of things to me and it is something I want to give due to by facing up to it.
And maybe it’s there where I can start to be those things. It’s not too late. I am not a B minus person. It is a grade which I am given and I can take what it is and maybe that is where I can begin to be not a B minus. Denial

To tell myself that grades are not everything is to not accept that I do find them important. But should they be? I don't know. After looking back at little more about what we've said today, I think they are. They can be so much pleasure and why should I belittle disappointment because it's unpleasant? Denial gets me nowhere.