I know that my mom gave birth, but where do I come from?

It is finals week here at [insert university name] and I didn’t have the most ideal amount of time to study for my hardest class. It was my very last final of the term and unfortunately one of the classes that I took to give myself some breathing room and a GPA boost became the class from Hell, as the final for it is three 1500 word essays that need to be peppered with evidence from our text as well as quotes and a 5 page bibliography. That final just happened to be due on the same day that I had my hardest final. But that isn’t the point of this musing.

I was at the boyfriend’s house studying for my very last final until 4am and I was reviewing the stuff that we covered at the beginning of the term, which is supposed to be the easy stuff, right? Well I haven’t done that stuff for 10 weeks and I wasn’t too sharp on any of it. So as I am struggling to regain the knowledge that I had at the beginning of the term I stop and ask my boyfriend,

‘Do you think I’ll be alright?’

Obviously referring to the final that I have to take in 12 hours, and he bites his lower lip, averts his eyes, and ducks his head….

NOT THE FEEDBACK I NEED RIGHT NOW!

I didn’t know what to do, I think that my eyes just bugged out of my head and my jaw hit the floor. I was speechless at the time, so I just packed up my bookbag and my laptop and turned to leave; as I was putting on my shoes he told me something that he would do for me and I just replied curtly. I guess that he could feel the tension in my voice, because he just said,

‘Really?’

As in ‘really, what is up with you’ and all I did was leave.

I didn’t talk to him the next day until after my exam after I had gotten back home when he text me saying,

‘You’ve been done for 20 minutes and haven’t called me?’

So, I called him, we got together at his house, watched a movie, and stayed up for a while; then as we were lying in bed the subject of the previous night came up. I told him that he reaction wasn’t what I needed at that particular moment and that I didn’t need him not believing in me.

I know that I am the hardest and worst critic of myself. I know that I get very crazy during finals week and that most people don’t like to be around me when I get like that. Which I understand, because they ahve their own crap to deal with and don’t need mine too. I said that even the college admins/executives/professors/advisers tell me that I will be just fine, that I don’t need to be so hard on myself.

No matter how often I have a temporary breakdown and ask myself what am I doing? why am I doing this to myself? I’m the least successful out of all my friends in my major; I can’t make it doing this, I should just switch to an easier degree; I know that I can do this. Whether it is with flying colors or by the skin of my teeth I know that I will make it. There are times when I just want to quite and give up but then I come to my senses and think screw that! I’ve put two and a half years of my life into this degree and I’ll be damned if I just roll over and let my negative side win.

And after I told all of this to the boyfriend, he said that he does believe in me and that he should
have been a better supporter of what I am doing. He said that he knows what it is like to be studying for a final the night before it is to take place and feeling unprepared for it. That he knows without a shadow of a doubt that I can do this. He said that he admires my drive and determination, admires how strong I am. Feels that I am stronger than he is, that when he was faced with the same thing; he feels that he quit.

When he was saying all of these things about my personality and who I am, it made me think: Where do I get all of these qualities? I know that both of my parents are strong, and I show similar signs of a good mixture of their personalities, but I show the drive, determination, and strength to a much higher degree.

I know that I am the strongest of all my friends, and they know it too at least I think they do, but I am so stubborn, so driven and determined that I have to honestly wonder where it comes from. I mean, I was the only one from my graduating class to go to college, I am the only grandchild to make it this far in college, and to have long term goals, to not let any man get in my head and thus in the way of my dreams. As much as I love my boyfriend, one of the things that I told him the other night was that I don’t need him. And I don’t mean that in a negative way, it is just that if we were to ever break up, or that we were to fight right before a final; I will never blame him for how I do on my exam and I will never get so sad that my life falls apart without him. Like I can’t live, or breath without him. I do love him, but I love myself too, and I have to be true to me first. I owe it to myself.

I know that I went off on a wild tangent there for a moment but to get back on track…I don’t have all the money in the world and I came to university anyways. I just think to myself ‘I’m already in debt, what’s a few thousand dollars more?’ And it’s true, if I allow the fact that I will have all these loans to pay off when I graduate and that there won’t be as much to pay off if I graduate sooner, thus I should take as many credits as possible and summer courses; but if I do that I won’t concentrate on my studies and then it won’t even matter because I will have failed out of college, have no career, and still have loans to pay off. So I can’t do that to myself, I refuse. The only thing I need to concentrate on is my studies.

Luckily, I have the self given genes to do it, too.