learning curve

Well, now that I have the bitterness off my chest :P I think I can try to look at this semester slightly more positively. Hopefully. :P How to describe everything that has happened...it was crazy, stressful, and depressing, but I think I did come away with some positive experiences. It started out pretty good, with Alex coming home from Alaska, but that only lasted about a month before things got really bad and I broke up with him. Work also started out really good, with a solid 20 hours a week, but that was also short lived, as my scheduled work hours dwindled down to 3. I was able to make up for it by taking other people's shifts however, and that was obviously a gift from God, because I was able to get more hours by picking them up than I had originally been scheduled (at least when I had 8 1/2 hrs). The stress caused by an unpredictable work schedule was hard, but I did learn that I could survive on 4 hours of sleep and tons of coffee. :p

I also learned of the compassion of some of my professors (or so I think, I don't actually have my grades yet). I had bronchitis for a month, so I missed several classes, but one professor allowed me to do extra credit, as well as to re-do an assignment. Hopefully this will put me at a passing level. In addition to that, I learned that the world does not come to an end when you break up with someone. Yes it was hard, but I realized afterward that I had been relying on him far too much anyway. I was not looking to God, and I was not even making an attempt to connect with people in Orange County (not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but I was essentially shooting myself in the foot, since that's where I'm living until I'm done with school). I learned that I was really not ready to be in a relationship, as much as I wanted it.

One of the hardest things to learn, of course, has been in the last week when I got my Torrey grade. In general I base a lot of my self esteem on my grades, my Torrey grades in particular, since that is the whole reason that I am at Biola. To me, getting a B, and being told that it was because I worked way below my potential (which to me translates to "you're just being lazy. Stop goofing off and you'll do better) is a blow that is really hard to get over. I went from sobbing, to mad, and now I'm just confused. I really don't know what to do because I feel like I am doing the best I can under the circumstances, but they are saying that that is just not enough. They want 100% of 100%, but so do all my other classes, and so does work. I only have 100% to give, so where does that leave me? If all I have to give is 100% of 30%, then that's all I have to give.

At this point I feel like God is trying to tell me to let go. To learn to lean on Him. After all, that's the only reason I can come up with for why I first lost my friends,, then my dog, then my boyfriend, then my good grades. It feels like everything is slipping through my fingers. And maybe that's the point. I really have no control over anything anyways, so I should just stop trying to control and let God run things. That's really hard to do, because I like having a plan and knowing what's going to come next. I like running the show because then there are no surprises and my life is comfortable. Maybe that is the big lesson behind all of this (and I have to find one because otherwise I think I will remain bitter about the hell I went through); maybe all I need to do is stop worrying about tomorrow, and focus on today instead. God will handle everything, and I'll be happier when I let Him. It's a tough lesson to learn, but it seems to be an important one because God is not letting me go without learning it.

With that in mind then, I think my only plan needs to be to focus on God. I don't need to worry about finances, or grades. I need to be responsible about it, but He will provide, and the future will take care of itself. God help me to make you the center of my life this semester. I don't want to go through another semester like the last one.

because I'll never really say it in person.

Dr. Vincent,
I don't even know where to begin. I feel like this last semester was so difficult and trying to talk to you about it was like trying to talk to a brick wall. Each time I tried to explain the amount of stress I was under, in the hopes that you would have some advice on how to organize things, or a way to work with me, I was told that personally you commiserated with me, but academically I needed to suck it up and deal with it, and if I couldn't I was going to get a B. You told me at the beginning of the semester, when I specifically made office hours to work on my notes, that unnecessary, there was no point, but then told me that they weren't good enough. It wasn't until after I pushed the issue (and cried about my confusion) that you finally gave me some clearer instruction (but not until after I only had 2 sets of notes left, so at that point it didn't do me a whole lot of good anyway). At Don Rags you told me that I did a really good job on the make-up assignment for Coleridge, then asked me why I never did that well on anything else (and then refused to believe me when I told you that it was because of the nature of the assignment, that all I did was copy the example that was given to me with the correct information, so it really wasn't anything more than filling in the blanks). On top of that you told me that because I did so well, I showed you that I was capable of far more than I was doing, and therefore you could not give me a good grade on the rest of my work. Thank you for punishing me for doing well on an assignment.

You also told me that because I got the ideas of Kant and Schleiermacher (the two hardest books we've read so far by the way) wrong that I obviously didn't learn anything this semester, and because of all of this put together, I did indeed deserve a B. I don't know what else you want from me. You have made it quite clear that doing the work and making the effort is not enough, that I have to have a passion for everything that we read, and apparently expect me to spend as much time on my four unit semesters as I did on my twelve unit semesters. (You told me as much when you said that now that I don't have twelve units anymore, I should have plenty of time to really focus hard on the quality of my work.) Apparently you don't understand the concept of other classes or working 20 hours in a week. So, thank you for making me feel like a lazy brat who is simply trying to sail her way through by doing as little as possible, and thank you for the panic attacks that your expectations resulted in.

Sincerely,