School has made me crazy.

I have always been a hard worker, particularly in school. I think it has a lot to do with my dad being a teacher. My parents always expected the best from me and therefore I always expected the best from myself. However, I realized sooner than my father that sometimes my best was a B or B+ instead of an A. I did well in elementary school and had straight A's during middle school, but high school I started to slip a little bit. I believe I had 6 Bs/B+s on my high school transcript. My dad was never too happy about Bs when they were on my report card, but somehow I still managed to get into college (this statement is written with much sarcasm). In college all my parents expected (beside my best) was a 3.0 and I managed to graduate with a 3.79. Now that I am in graduate school the craziness has really set in.

I don't think I have felt pressure from my parents about grades since my first semester of college, so to make up for it, I am putting the pressure on myself. I am taking a class this semester called European Historiography. This is not my favorite course. It is mainly focused on historical theory, something I know relatively nothing about. Anyway, two weeks ago we had to turn in a 5-6 page rough draft of a paper which was the beginning of a 10-15 page final paper. The paper is supposed to explore the way in which a historical subject has been approached by different authors who used a discernable theoretical methodology in their work. So in the draft I (and I think pretty much everyone else) mentioned different authors and the theories they used, but didn't go too in depth. I figured that is where I would elaborate during the final draft...

Well we got these drafts back on Wednesday night. Before handing them back he said that he had given all As and Bs and they were all pretty good, but some people needed to work on their paragraph structure. I am sitting there thinking, "what morons in graduate school don't know how to write a paragraph??" He also went on and on about how we all needed to elaborate on the theory aspect of the paper. Well...yeah. You asked for a 5-6 page draft, how much theory do you think we can cram in there?? So he hands them back and I had received a B. I was one of the students with the lowest grade in the class. He also did not like my writing style. I have never had a professor dislike my writing. I have won awards for writing. I felt so stupid.

Then I started freaking out - if i get a B in this class it will ruin my 4.0 GPA. Now, I am not planning on going to school any longer after completing the MA in the spring, but I am pretty sure a 3.9 could get me into a PhD program if I really wanted to go. I also don't like this class and would say it is the most challenging one I have been in. So if my best is a B, it shouldn't be the end of the world. I keep telling myself that I am over it because having a 4.0 when I graduate just doesn't matter...but it would be pretty cool!

I know that in the grand scheme of things this is so unimportant and yet i wasted all of this time writing about it and felt like i was going to cry Wednesday night in class...I swear, school has made me crazy!!