Plain and simple, I’ve never been a math person. I’d rather write a ten-page paper than bring out a calculator, or I’d rather deliver a public debate to a room of 500 peers than compute any type of formula, which, knowing my introverted self, is saying a lot. Unfortunately for me, my major’s curriculum doesn’t grant individual exceptions for its biostatistics requirement due to the reason that “the student is straight up not feeling the vibes,” meaning I had to commit myself to at least try to get through the eleven weeks to get the credit. The first of three exams was last Wednesday, and I held the world in my hands when I left the lecture hall—I knew I didn’t 100 percent ace it, but felt confident in most of my answers nonetheless. It was a shock when the scores were released the next day and I excitedly opened Canvas, and the optimistic smile on my face faded faster than I could blink.
Reflecting on my reaction to that moment now, funny enough, I can draw a parallel in between my emotions I felt when I opened Canvas and the five stages of grief: first, my denial made the score on my screen impossible to believe, especially since my sociology and public health midterms just the day before that had gone better than I could’ve wildly dreamed of. My next reaction was anger; the perfectionist in me was beside herself that this had happened. Feeling incredibly down on myself, I packed up some weekend necessities in my backpack and took the first bus I could find towards home, where I sat with myself and admitted that, for the first time this quarter, I was unhealthily overwhelmed.
It seemed that with this rough midterm score, everything else that wasn’t currently sunshine and lollipops in my life crept up from my subconscious and told me that I wasn’t going to succeed in public health because of this, I wasn’t good at anything, and that this trend was going to continue until the end of my educational journey. My first mission, after I had time to collect my thoughts and take a breath, was to push this mentality to the side, or rather off a cliff. First of all, no, just because I didn’t quite nail the difference between a bar chart and histogram does not, realistically, mean that I am destined for doom for the rest of my life, about to diverge into a life of crime and deviance. Second, I know myself, and I know that despite earning a grade on the midterm that was not the best, I’m going to keep going. I’m not going to drop the class, or stop going to lectures, or even stop taking notes—that’s not who I am. I’m destined to finish the class, one way or another, and having a negative mindset that asserts that I’m going to fail will only make the rest of this trek harder than it needs to be.
My next step was to take a break from the class, as well as my other two classes, and, for the first time since September, whole-heartedly focus on something else without the looming thought of school taking over a main part of my life. Instead of attending the following lecture for the class or even watching the recording right away, my dad and I went to one of our favorite hiking spots off of I-90 to walk our dogs, and even if it was only a temporary distraction from my academic responsibilities, it was, literally, a breath of fresh air. The biostats midterm was out of my control for those few hours, and, after taking an involuntarily break from checking to see if my professor had somehow miraculously changed my grade, I began to not care anymore. I’ve been recently trying to worry less about the past, since it’s wasted energy that could be going towards something more productive, as I’ve simultaneously been trying to remind myself that the only thing I can control in this life is…me. The hiking break was a chance to remind myself that the test was one tiny blip in the wide span of my college experience, and fixating on it would be a waste of time that would fall short of benefitting anybody, least of all me.
From a perfectionist standpoint, it still stung today when I walked into class and overheard classmates behind me talking about how they did “pretty good” or “didn’t do too bad,” whereas I still feel the exact opposite. But, in all honesty, I’ve done well at UW so far, and this, if I’m trying to maintain a positive spin on this, was an appropriate reminder that college is hard sometimes! I’ve been lucky that my skills have made the road to graduation a pretty straight shot so far, but realistically, everybody has a hairpin turn in their road at one point or another, where a class subject just isn’t their thing. And just because I had one setback doesn’t make me any less successful or any reason to not be as confident in myself as I was a week ago. College, and getting an education in general, isn’t about getting everything perfect on the first try anyway. I think that at one point or another, everyone in their higher education stages should remember that for their own state of well-being.