December 18, 2006

How I earned my B

My grades came back in. I made an A in Medieval Lit and a B in History of the English Language. Oh, and I have a W for one class because I had to withdraw instead of drop. That's only the second B I've made in four and a half years of college, and I'm actually kind of proud of it. The first B I made was in a pre-cal trig class during my undergrad, and my mom never let me forget that I would have had a 4.0 if it wasn't for that one B. After that I worked my tail off to keep my GPA up. I succeeded too. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 3.97 overall GPA and a 4.0 in my discipline. When I went to grad school though things were a little different. I had a husband to take care of, which meant putting food on the table and doing at least a minimum level of housework. Then, after being married just a month and a half, I got pregnant. This was wonderful news, but it also meant that I had even more constraints on my time and activities. I couldn't spend all day and all night working my tail off. Even if I could have neglected Allen for a semester I had to take care of myself in order to take care of the baby. This meant dropping out of one of my classes and pulling back on two of my others. One reason for this is that over the past couple of months I've been dealing with a good deal of spotting. From all we know the pregnancy is fine, but several years of cumulative stress have weakened and ruptured various capillaries and caused my generous spotting. A large part of dealing with this has meant taking breaks, working through emotional issues, and distancing myself from my emotional commitment to getti been thinkingng perfect grades. The result: one A, one B, and one W. Earning that B was hard. I had to break a lot of bad habits and release a lot of negative emotions about how I viewed school and my own self-worth. Although others may see that B as me lowering my standards, I see that B as me raising my standards on the kind of life I want to live and learning to measure myself by God's standards instead of anyone else's. I'm proud of that A too- especially since I didn't put the effort into that class that I otherwise would have. It means that I really am smart and capable, that I don't have to work myself silly for fear that I'm not good enough or smart enough. But I think I'm most proud of that B.

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