Upset with Myself

Have you ever spent hours working on a puzzle and then found you were missing the last piece to complete it? Have you ever spent days planning a party, trip, or game and then had to cancel it because people bailed on you?

Well this past week I felt these feelings of frustration multiplied by 10. I am a studious individual…ok I am a nerd, so I spent a LOT of time studying for 3 exams that I had during the week. Let’s just put it this way, over the previous week and a half I spent 12+ hours studying for one exam alone. This kind of studying is nothing new to me since I have always been determined and focused to do well and learn as much as I can in school. I just adopted this mentality in high school since I figured being a student was “my job”. Most of my hard work over the years has paid off and have been able to truly believe that the harder you work the better you will do. This hard work thing blew up in my face this past week...here enters the frustration.

I reviewed material, I practiced problems, I rewrote notes, the whole gamut. I thought I understood the material. In fact, in one of my classes at a review session I was explaining concepts to students because the teacher did not know how to explain them. Well I took my exams and… I did not do as well as I would have liked or thought I would do.

There are a number of things I could blame it on, they were the first exams of the semester, first exams by new teachers, I was sick all week, I had little sleep, etc but that would be taking the easy route and I am not like that. I got my tests back and reviewed what I missed and understand why I missed things yet it still bothers me that I did not do very well. I know people that did not put forth as much effort as I did in studying, yet they still did just as well or better. Frustrating?….YES!! I did not do horrible but it just was not what I would expect to receive after all my efforts.
I know that these types of things should not get to me so much considering there are other important things in life. Grades are not the end all be all and will not really matter once I am done with school. When these frustrating events happen, I feel like not trying at all on the rest of my school work, because hey all the work did not pay off so doing no work cannot get any worse results. I begin to doubt that the harder you work the better you do. I know I could never just slide by in school because in the end, I would feel too upset for not giving it my all. After reviewing a test with one of my professors, he mentioned, “You did better than the average and half the class”…..I just thought to myself, “I don’t JUST want to be SLIGHTLY better than the average” and "I could care less about the rest of the class".

The grade is not what bothers me, it is that I feel as if I put forth so much effort towards something and it did not turn out the way I wanted it to. I worked hard at “my job” and it still did not turn out as well as I wished. This frustration is like a tick that keeps on going in my head. It feels like that missing puzzle piece or abandoned party.