Graduating
I found out yesterday that I would be graduating with first class honours.
It seems noteworthy that this is the first time I have felt more than satisfied with my academic performance. It is also the first time that there was literally no higher award I could get in a particular course of study.
Properly realising that my standards might be a little high has been a bit weird - I've always considered that I've done 'well enough', but never actually 'well'. My high school results were 'well enough' to get in to the course I wanted, I've done 'well enough' in classes/music. Even last week going through some of my old school assignments and test results, I would look at the results and see only the marks that were missing, or the 'Very Good' rather than 'Excellent', which was exactly how I saw them at the time. I was always able to explain away any musical success (scholarships, orchestras, solos and so on) by considering that I was playing an unusual instrument, rather than because I had any skill with it. My family celebrated scholarships as successes, but of course S got hers for year 7, and it was for year 11 that I got mine, which was always a bit painful.
In contrast to my past experiences, though, it was really nice to think "heck yes, I want to celebrate tonight". So we went out for dessert at Koko Black after G had finished teaching. It was tasty, and I was pretty pleased with myself. Hooray!
This entry was originally posted at http://rain-and-snow.dreamwidth.org/71007.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
It seems noteworthy that this is the first time I have felt more than satisfied with my academic performance. It is also the first time that there was literally no higher award I could get in a particular course of study.
Properly realising that my standards might be a little high has been a bit weird - I've always considered that I've done 'well enough', but never actually 'well'. My high school results were 'well enough' to get in to the course I wanted, I've done 'well enough' in classes/music. Even last week going through some of my old school assignments and test results, I would look at the results and see only the marks that were missing, or the 'Very Good' rather than 'Excellent', which was exactly how I saw them at the time. I was always able to explain away any musical success (scholarships, orchestras, solos and so on) by considering that I was playing an unusual instrument, rather than because I had any skill with it. My family celebrated scholarships as successes, but of course S got hers for year 7, and it was for year 11 that I got mine, which was always a bit painful.
In contrast to my past experiences, though, it was really nice to think "heck yes, I want to celebrate tonight". So we went out for dessert at Koko Black after G had finished teaching. It was tasty, and I was pretty pleased with myself. Hooray!
This entry was originally posted at http://rain-and-snow.dreamwidth.org/71007.html. Please comment there using OpenID.