elanya | (no subject)

I am having serious doubts right now.

I don't feel like I'm smart enough to be here. I am never going to be the brightest. I sit firmly on the low end of 'smarter'. I can only pretend to be organized. Even when I'm successful, it doesn't matter because the things I turn out are shit anyway. The only reason I did 'well' at sheffield was that no one there knew what the hell I was talkign about. They couldn't point out my myriad flaws. I still never did that well.

Even if I finish here... And I am probably capable of finishing, I won't have good enough marks to be chosen for a good PHD program, if I can even find one. All the things I want to do are either stupid or impossible. But there isn't anything else I cwant to do. I am just destine to be highly mediocre, and unremarkable, except to my friends. And there is no one *here* anyway. And even if you tell me I am awesome it doesn't mean that I am going to be good enough at this. It doesn't make be better. I don't even know where this is coming from.

people here think I am clever and on top of things, and it is such a lie. There people are clever enough to wait until the day before an assignment, in grad school, and then shit out something that is still good enough to merit an 'a'. I'm not. Evren if I try, if I make myself finish things a week ahead of time, the things I output are so shitty that it doesn't matter. I am not going to be able to compete. I'm not going to be wirth dumping another out of State tuition waiver into, and so I will spend the last of my inheritence on a grad school degree that won't take me as far as I need to go.

I don't know what I can do to make any of this better. I don't even know how I feel, except that I went to take a shower an hour ago and I haven't been able to stop crying, I wish I was at elast learning the things I wanted to learn here, or doing the things I wanted to. I haven't even been out to the conservation lab, because I don't have any way to get out there, and they run on such a tight schedule that I don't think I could just go out there randomly anyway. I don't know what to do.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've been doing some reading regarding the whole grad school thing of late, and the conclusion most people seem to harp on is this: Everyone is constantly convinced that their work is subpar, that they are not up on the material, that their papers are crap, and that everyone else is light years ahead of where they are. This is due to the general process of learning, especially in a higher academic setting, being all hidden from the eye of the observer, such that you only see yourself flipping out and pulling your hair out over the goddamn mire of text, and you see everyone's end product of similar labors, thus leading to the whole 'everyone is smarter than me at this' thing.

Also, on people pulling awesome papers out of their asses at the last minute: I do this all the time. This does not, however, mean that I'm better at doing this sort of thing than others; it means that I can't function without the pressure of a deadline. If others are operating in a manner similar to the method I tend to use, they get a whole bunch of information, stuff it into their brain early on, and let it sit and gestate for awhile. Essentially, by the time they sit down to actually write, they've already gone through a draft or two. It's just a different method, and does not reflect in any way on the compotence of the author.

So, um, yeah. Also don't be neurotic. You'll kill yourself.