#6184 Im sharing something that I have never shared with anyone (except my mom) before. Back in high school, I used to be a typical Asian kid obsessed with grades. I pushed myself. I used to study more than 8 hours per day. I literally had no life. I HATED school. My subjects (except English) were not interesting at all. The only great times were when I got my grades back since perfect As did reflect my hard efforts. In Gr.11, I went into the IB Diploma Program (sort of like AP or any other university preparation program), and things started to shift. Breakdowns happened thanks to these: 1. Abusive teachers: some teachers were great. But some teachers literally mentally abused me, criticizing my work and blaming me for being stupid whenever I asked them for help. Their attitude literally created my phobia of asking for help. I still cannot forget the arrogant look this one teacher gave to me. 2. Competitive peers: we were all friends outside but enemies inside. A very few people gave help to each other; we rarely had study sessions. I once saw this sociopath chuckling when another person was crying because she was glad that she got a better mark than the crying person...Whenever someone gets a great score, another person would say, huh, but ____ did better than you. Somehow ____ was worshipped like God in my school for being a smartest student; the other students were all unrecognized as something less because they were all compared to _____. Thats how messed up my HS was. And then I got my predicted grade for IB (a mark predicted by teachers on what you would get in your final IB exams. This score determines whether you will be accepted to the uni or not). The score was so average. It was not what I expected and seemed to merely reflect my hard work. Meanwhile, I saw CHEATERS getting higher predicted grades than me. I saw BRIBERS getting higher grades. I had to watch them boast. I wept out of frustration several times afterwards, hiding in my room or bathroom, but something positive came out of this. I threw away that mindset that told me that grades had to be everything of my life. Grades were NOT. I had to somehow stop this obsession and become more human. So I threw away the stress and everything indeed became better. I still studied hard, but I made sure that I do not lose my self-esteem because of this one mere score that meant nothing. Slowly, I gained my life back and got my pleasure from things other than grades. MES from SFU and compliments from my English teacher proved me that some people will recognize my efforts without throwing a shitstorm at me, giving me such encouragements. So therefore, in July, I got back a much better final exam score from IB organization, a score belonging to top 5% of the world; I was happy , but most importantly, I was happy as a complete human being, not as a grades-obsessive person. Nothing would have been better if I have not gained a positive outlook on the world. Now in SFU, everything is so much better. Profs are not as intimidating as I thought (at least better than the abusive teachers), I am learning something that gives me joy. Yes, I feel stressed sometimes. I do procrastinate sometimes still, but everything is better nowadays and I believe that something greater will come out of this 4 year experience. I am making friends who care about what they learn, not ones who care about their grades only. I am here to grow; I guess the burden has flown away a bit. Sorry for being TL;DR, but my point is this. If you have had such discouragements and the stress that I have gone through , dont let them to discourage you! They are not definitions of your potential. Dont listen to abusive people around you. Work for your dreams, and you will eventually reach them :)
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 06:26:56 +0000
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