Life. We're in it. For the long haul. It's what we do. We get up in the morning, shower -- most of us -- dress neatly -- some of us -- and trudge/bike/drive/ into the day.
Life. It's nasty. Sometimes. Often. Well, in truth not often, but there are those days when it is difficult to be. That's right. It's just hard to be. It's hard to be breathing, or walking, or reading our way along our chosen path. There are times when a person must reconsider who or what it was, exactly, that was driving the train whose wreck currently symbolizes our life.
Let me place the I into this argument and bring it into some sort of context with the previous paragraph and say that I am fresh from, well for now let's just call it a significant emotional experience. This brutish experience was connected, as most of my current life is, with school, my performance within its strictures and my perception of its reality and importance.
As big crocodile tears drip to my keyboard and I reflect on my dismal performance in a recent mid-term examination (the significant emotional experience, the SEE), I am prodded, painfully, into reconsidering my hopelessly intimate relationship with my GPA. Unfortunately, a written exam is the only measurement device granted almost universal acceptance in the world inside, and outside these ivory towers and so, it is that yardstick that determines how I will feel about my lovely average. It is the only measurement of academic success I've grown up with and attach any importance too. There's the rub.
Of course, this introspection and momentary attachment of overwrought feelings to a commonplace event could be considered insignificant, but it is the event that serves as a trigger for a larger idea. The test is not the truly important thing. It is my perception of it in relation to my perception of self that is really important. Hold on a minute, while I get the hip waders out. This could get a little deep. Bear with me, please, and see if you can scare up some wellies before I go on. And, please, feel free to weep right along.
A reliance on external sources of validation leads to a constant search and need for that outside imprimatur of acceptance. What, you might ask, does that have to do with my place in the chain firmly attached to the anchor that holds a class grading curve at the bottom of its arc? It has everything to do with the feelings that provoked this dismal, public diatribe on personal achievement and its place in my -- and by authorial extension, our collective -- life.
How are we to remain confident and assured about our place in great scheme of things when we are assaulted, seemingly at every juncture, with admonitions to excel, to exceed the standard, to multi-task, organize, create, do more, do it quicker, work at it longer? There is a constant measurement of personal performance against a bar that appears to rise almost daily. Suddenly, the awful reminder that there are some things bigger than we are is a wet blanket that chafes our tender skin. We cry out for baby powder, but all we get is another diaper.
We function in this exceptionally challenging world because that is what is expected of us. We swim in fast water. We are, most of us, involved in more than academics. We have volunteer work, we've joined student organizations, there are jobs to do, basements to prepare and formals to be invited to. We are not slackers and that singular fact is what makes a dreadful performance on an exam such a painful experience. Who didn't get outstanding grades before they came here? Raise your hands. High. Just as I thought. Only mine is up.
So, it comes back to the personal. I can't speak for the group. But I do know a thing or two about a thing or two. I know that if we rely on something or someone to support the scaffold of our self then it is bound to collapse.
I know that it is difficult to gain a reasonable perspective on the events that make up our lives so that we may see their true place in our life. There. That comes to two things about two things, so I've used up my bit of the clich and I'll gracefully exit. Anybody have a hanky?
