I bet if you averaged it out, I'd be an okay student.

Not great, like everyone thinks I should be able to be all the time. Not awful, like I am sometimes. Just okay.

If you asked two different professors about me, I bet you'd think they were talking about two different people. The ones whose classes I enjoyed, where the work was manageable and interesting and the subject matter fascinated me, would say I'm a great student, really smart, turn in well-done assignments, if a day or two late. If you asked the ones whose classes I didn't like, whose classes I fell behind in, paralyzed and anxious and unable to do the work, they'd say I'm a horrible student, always extremely late with assignments, never communicating well enough, always kind of checked-out in class. And they would both be right.

This has been a pattern... ever since I started having individual teachers for different classes, I suppose, although it got a lot worse in college.

So for this current semester, I have one class with my advisor, who is awesome. I'm on top of the work in that class, and I usually have a lot to say in the discussions. In other words, doing well. I contacted her about my crisis of whether or not I should still be in school, and confided to her the trouble I have getting things done on time, how it's so much more of a struggle for me than I let on. She was kind of surprised, I think, and I'm afraid I've lowered her opinion of me.

I also have a class with one of my favorite professors, who taught a class I loved and did great in a couple of summers ago. But the subject matter in this class isn't as interesting to me, and the final project, which we're supposed to already be working on, seems huge and daunting. So I'm way behind. I haven't contributed to the discussion in a couple of weeks. I get nervous whenever I even think about the amount of work I'm going to have to do to catch up.

I contacted her, too, and confessed I was really behind, but that I want to catch up. She was really understanding about it, and told me I was too smart to stay behind for too long. But then, she hasn't seen me do this before.

I always hate to disappoint them. To Not Live Up To My Potential. I want them to like me. And usually they do, until I start missing deadlines.

Man, sometimes I feel like I've been reliving my high school struggles over and over again, and the universe won't let me stop being in school until I learn how to get things done on time. Like some kind of horrible Groundhog Day with term papers. And the teachers are all metaphors for my parents, who were never as proud of me as I wanted them to be. And the radio alarm plays songs from High School Musical.

I do best when I stop giving myself high expectations, comparing myself to other people (real or imagined), or worrying about disappointing anybody. Those are rare times, but they have happened.

On a somewhat related note, I saw this book at the library called "Why Don't Students Like School?" like it was this huge mystery, and I was like, uh, how would you like it if you had no agency and someone put you in a place where people told you what to do all day and you had to ask permission to go to the bathroom? And then when you got home, you had to do more things they told you to do, even though none of this was your choice in the first place? And they told you it was All For Your Own Good? I mean, come on. School is hell. Everyone knows that.

And yet I keep going back. Because it's For My Own Good.