The Spring grind to Summer recovery.
Hey everybody, its been a while.
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I am still alive, and barely keeping sane in these awful times. It’s been a few months since the last post, and the previous college quarter finished. I Got a 3.2 in statistics, and a 4.0 in public speaking.
Both are excellent grades, though I am much more proud of the Statistics grade, because I worked my ass off to achieve this result, turning in everything, doing the corrections to improve my grade, and spending as much time as I could studying. While the public speaking grade was fantastic, I feel looking back, that there was a couple times that I slacked a bit on assignments, and didn’t give everything i could into the speech performances, and the writing aspects.
While part of the public speaking grade is due to the relaxed grading of the public speaking class, that is that as long as I gave a pretty good performance of the delivered speech, and not stick strictly to the assignment requirements, I have to not be cruel to myself.
I had to come to terms with the fact that I deserve the grades I earned with the work as it was turned in. To accept the kindness of my professor, his acknowledgement through kind comments on assignments and the chosen grade and how well I did with the structure of the class as it was.
I took me until the beginning of August to accept that, as compared to the lower 3.2 grade (a low B), where I had to put the most effort I had into the class every single day, like treading water in stormy seas, only to blackout from exhaustion as the waters stilled and the storm abated. Then to wake up hours later. In a boat, shivering, coughing up water I had breathed from drowning because I was saved by rescuers.
A but hyperbolic for sure.
The reason for the dramatization above is that at one point in the final two weeks of the quarter in Statistics class, my posted grade, before the professor graded the corrections and outstanding projects, was 74.44 %. So, 0.46% FAILING or 1.9. which is below the minimum 2.0 passing grade. Naturally, I was incredibly stressed. I was checking my grades in the few days between the end of class, and the end of the quarter every single day to see if I had, at the minimum, met the 2.0 grade.
ON TOP OF THIS, if I had failed that class, I would have had to go yet another quarter without financial aid because it was suspended for that Spring quarter.
Because of the inauguration, The fucking Felon pedophile who is president, and the beginning of this nightmare in America. Summed up in this post from earlier this year:
HOWEVER, I passed.
In Isolation.
My last minute email to my professor to please regrade the project regrade that he missed, succeeded and it was graded for the maximum 20/20 points. Before this, my grade had risen above 74.44, but I was not taking any chances. I felt confident in myself and especially in that project because I was proud of the work I did. I was going insane, bargaining with myself every day as the grades slowly were posted in phases, ruminating and driving myself crazy by going into the grades section of the class and testing the “potential grades” option in assignments as a method to cope and prepare myself– to prepare myself for disaster. To create every single possible scenario of failure and success (A ratio of 95% to 99%, and 5 to 1% Success) so I would not be shocked or devastated at the worst possible results.
Because like everything in life, I have to deal with everything myself. I am isolated when I have problems in my immediate surroundings. Blamed or psychologically punished when I express negative emotions. In the therapy sessions I had with the college therapist, she was kind and gentle to try to nudge me to try to view how things could go right and imagine what would feel like. How I could clearly imagine success.
Anyway…
The quarter finished, I worked my ass off in one class and got a solid B grade, and gave roughly 70 percent effort in my other class and got an A. It took me about six weeks to recover from the burnout (emotional, physical, and creative), and I’m back to my new typical self, with my mood and sanity varying by current events.
Which… I’ve taken a step to limit my daily use of the Threads social media app to an hour total per day. Oh, oh, and I’ve been playing a lot of videogames this summer. Mostly on my PS5, the games being Rim world, Oblivion remastered in June-July, and in August I’ve returned to Tibia after twenty years. I’ve been enjoying the updated game. I still have a use problem with YouTube, as I find myself spending an increasing amount of time scrolling through videos on my remote, or saving to watch later. (The TV app being the main source I watch it.)
I am getting bored and annoyed with the suggestion algorithm and awful feedback design of YouTube in general.
One plus month until next quarter.
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