"I've made a huge mistake"

Well not really, but it always makes me laugh to hear that line (from many, many episodes of Arrested Development), so J & I use it for every little thing. And big things too. But mostly it's funny to say it when you forget to ask for no pickles on your burger or something.

Anyway I feel like a total moron now. The whole taking my class pass/fail thing got blown way out of proportion, and wound up going to the whole faculty for discussion, and now I'm basically mortified because all these people will forever see me as The Girl Who Wanted to Take Her Classes Pass/Fail. (insert organ chords here)

I'm trying to make light but actually I'm damn depressed. I feel like I've screwed up my reputation. They want us to take classes for a grade so they "know we're taking them seriously." Well that makes sense, but also, I always take school seriously. So it didn't occur to me that I might send the signal that I'm not. That's why I wrestled so hard with the decision of what to do this fall.

And then I made a choice that I thought would make everybody satisfied, and I still got busted. I thought I was making the responsible choice, still being a relatively good student in light of my new responsibilities, and I still come off looking like the yahoo, the slacker. And I hate that because people, I am no slacker. God, I've put so much pressure on myself my whole life. My teachers used to chastise my parents for pushing me so hard, and they had to tell them it was all me. And this was in grade school.

Anyway I'm cranky and depressed. After they met I felt like they were all treating me differently. Like oh, we're so stupid for giving that girl our big scholarship. And then I went to the opening convocation for the year, and there I am in the program as one of the few scholarship people, and I was just miserable and embarrassed. I couldn't enjoy it. Well I did enjoy it when Maggie started laughing because I was bouncing her, but I had to make her stop, so pooey.

At least I have the blog to vent on. I'm pissed also because they didn't make this decision until after it was too late for me to change it for free, so now I might have to pay $50 to change to a grade, even though I was completely within my rights (per anything written down) to take the class pass/fail. If someone along the way would have just said, "I think you might want to leave it as a grade" then I totally would have! But now I'm stuck and I have been instructed to change it, but not because of a policy or anything, but because that's what's expected. And I get it - I totally get it. I just really wish it were made clear. I was confused and now I pay the price. I realize that a lot of stuff is just politics and unwritten laws, but it's difficult when you haven't learned to play the game yet and the rules keep changing on you. If it were expected, then it should be made clear in the handbook. The handbook, in fact, says the opposite - that classes may be taken pass/fail - and doesn't say anything about needing to take grades. So it's super confusing. And coming from a school where there's no stigma attached to p/f, I didn't realize what a big deal it would become. It wasn't a big deal to me at all.

OK, I can stop now. I'm also pissed at our housemates because they're eighteen and they are used to their parents cleaning up after them, and they don't really know how to run a household or keep things nice. So J and I are getting to take care of a lot of stuff that we'd rather not, like picking through their trash to get out the recyclables, etc. Next time I'm getting more seasoned roommates, people who've lived on their own a while and know how to keep house. It's just more than I feel like dealing with.

Maggie's been especially drama queen lately - she's super happy most of the time (thankfully, usually that's in public), but then when she's tired, she has major meltdowns. This just started. She used to nap so readily. Now she has to scream for at least a couple minutes and sometimes a half hour before she'll go down. Ugh. So when she's doing this, the last thing I feel like doing is also parenting two teenagers (who have sex waaaay too loudly and then fight waaaaay too loudly, not always in that order).

Anyway there's a lot in my life. You see now why I needed the break from school?! And yes, I'll admit it, today I finally really did get depressed. But not about Mags, she's still mostly wonderful (excepting the meltdowns). Just about my rep at school, and dealing with the people I live with, and generally feeling like...well...I've made a huge mistake.

Ha ha.