Getting over myself. A tale of okay assignment results and getting rid of a selfish attitude.

A 'first world' problem post about 'meh' assignment results. And how selfish I can be.

We received, via email, the results of our first assignment last week. It was an essay. We answered one of two questions, and I chose to write about censorship. It was the first academic essay I'd written in a long time. The bulk of my undergrad degree (creative writing) coursework, was as it said on the tin - creative pieces - and I was fairly clueless as to the level of a postgrad degree essay. I'd never used Harvard referencing (at least not properly) and I was utterly perplexed as to how to go about structuring. But I tried. I did the reading, poured over books and tried to make sense of the confusing and sometimes total lack of laws surrounding censorship. I watched Ted Talks, scoured journals and pieced together 3000 words in what I considered a fairly decent essay covering the main points of censorship. I handed it in two days early. I thought all was well.

And to be honest, all was well. It wasn't terrible. Not at all. I passed. The grade was the correct side of 50%. And that was that.

And that was that.
And that was that.

It wasn't anything to get excited over.
It wasn't ground-breaking writing.
It was just,
well...
that.

It just left me feeling downhearted. I commenced this course, bright eyed and bushy tailed and thinking awesome thoughts. Awesome thought examples:

"This is my calling!"

"I'm basically going to be a female Giles!" (spuffyshipperbtw)

and

"I'm going to re-define a stereotype!"

(tumblr) Yes Giles. Librarians can party too.

And then I got the essay back. And all that conjured up some less awesome thoughts:

"Is this my calling?"

"I'll never be a female Giles. My accent is the wrong sort of British."

and

"I have nothing to contribute to this profession. Go home boring white girl."

After I'd sobbed out my frustration over a hastily order Chinese takeaway, I sent a tearful email to my lecturer asking whether I could re-sit this essay of what I considered fairly 'meh' proportions. I understood what I'd done wrong and wanted to fix it. I then remembered that my lecturer is only in two days a week. So for the next few days I suffered feelings akin to when you send an overly embarrassing, emotional text to a friend whilst drunk. And they don't reply. And you're left waiting for days to see whether they still like you or not. And then I finally received an email. Summed up, it basically said:

You passed. It was fine for a first essay. Get over yourself.

But in much nicer terms, because my lecturer is actually super fantastic.
And you know what? She was right. Sure, I'm not "super-librarian" yet. But it was the first essay. I'm still in the baby steps of learning all this stuff and now I know what (and what not) to include in my next assignment.

I struggled, in the aftermath of receiving my result, to find the motivation to begin my next essay, due in in a couple of weeks. I wondered what the point was. I didn't want to put in all the effort again jut to get a similar 'meh' result. I phoned JJ on his lunch break for some motivation. He had wise words:
"Remember you've paid for this degree. Like, money. Lots of it."
Oh yeah. When nothing else can get you motivated, remember: You can't afford to do it again.

In all seriousness, not just because of the money thing, I am over myself. I was lucky and I know a few members of my class are having a far worse time than myself. Others would have been very happy with my result. In a moment of horrible, self-focussed, selfishness I thought it was the end of the world because I wasn't awesome yet. Which is the worse kind of attitude to have ever and I'm mentally slapping it out of myself right now because I don't want to be that sort of person. Tis the season to be grateful, and appreciate that I passed at all.

I will power through till the Christmas hols. Then I will continue to power through because more assignments are due after that. Basically I will not stop powering through for another approx 10 months.

The next post will be uplifting. Or possibly at least slightly less moany.

Over and out.