(no subject)
There is a line from "What to Do" by OK Go that says "Mediocre people do exceptional things all the time." The fact is, there's something incredibly encouraging about that line, and I've latched to it for over two years now. I've lately been questioning its power to drive me, though. Certainly, mediocre people do exceptional things sometimes, but for the most part, they only have mediocre accomplishments to their names. That is why they're considered mediocre people in the first place. I can chant "Mediocre people do exceptional things all the time" to myself all I want, but the raw truth is that I don't do exceptional things all the time. "What To Do" made me smile bitterly both in Colorado a couple weeks ago, when I plummeted in the rankings from the top 10 to barely within the realm of the top 40, and today, when I was flat-out rejected by my top choice college.
I was simply inadequate. The dawning of that realization came in several stages. I cried a bit. I realized, "Shit! I have to tell Canders she was right!" (that was the most difficult stage.) I pondered just who Vassar thought they were. I mean, I was not the most fantastic candidate ever, but neither was it the hardest school I applied to, and those schools that were (Brown, Washington) did not reject me out of hand. I even went through a little stage where I was determined to pull a solid A+ in everything until the end of the year, just to show them. Oh, and then I could be some sort of world-renowned scholar at another school and cure disease and sow the seeds of world peace, all before the age of 22, and Vassar would burn itself down out of frustration. But then I remembered I have to do a long writeup on a fetal pig dissection with no guidelines for AP Bio, and who's looking anymore anyway? Then I cried some more.
Eventually I just listened to "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" for 20 minutes, and it was all okay. And I will be okay. It's a good thing that my desire to prove everyone wrong is strong to a fault. Now I can prance around with forced delight telling everyone who said I'd get into Vassar (and there were many such people) that they're idiots. And, apparently, so am I.
This entry was originally going to just be "Vassar rejected me," but it appears that verbosity is therapeutic for me. I'm sorry some of you probably felt obliged to read that, but not enough to overpower the loathsome pity I feel for myself and delete it.
I was simply inadequate. The dawning of that realization came in several stages. I cried a bit. I realized, "Shit! I have to tell Canders she was right!" (that was the most difficult stage.) I pondered just who Vassar thought they were. I mean, I was not the most fantastic candidate ever, but neither was it the hardest school I applied to, and those schools that were (Brown, Washington) did not reject me out of hand. I even went through a little stage where I was determined to pull a solid A+ in everything until the end of the year, just to show them. Oh, and then I could be some sort of world-renowned scholar at another school and cure disease and sow the seeds of world peace, all before the age of 22, and Vassar would burn itself down out of frustration. But then I remembered I have to do a long writeup on a fetal pig dissection with no guidelines for AP Bio, and who's looking anymore anyway? Then I cried some more.
Eventually I just listened to "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2" for 20 minutes, and it was all okay. And I will be okay. It's a good thing that my desire to prove everyone wrong is strong to a fault. Now I can prance around with forced delight telling everyone who said I'd get into Vassar (and there were many such people) that they're idiots. And, apparently, so am I.
This entry was originally going to just be "Vassar rejected me," but it appears that verbosity is therapeutic for me. I'm sorry some of you probably felt obliged to read that, but not enough to overpower the loathsome pity I feel for myself and delete it.