...stuff.

[raven]

There is no aspect of my life that is not making me depressed at the moment.

Well, maybe that's not the case. Fandom is cool. Fandom is always cool. I may not be writing very much, but I'm enjoying my collaboration with amchau. That's not making me depressed. Neither is my currently minimal involvement in Harry Potter and M*A*S*H - fandom is always cool, as previously said.

And then there's the other personal aspect - my friends in general. I am blessed with friends, remarkably for one so weird and formerly lonely. I have a real "best friend", and some nearly-so friends, and a lot of people whom I have never met but still consider friends.

To rephrase: there are few aspects of my life that are not making me depressed at the moment.

To be honest, it's mainly school. In a nutshell, I don't feel good enough. I have exams in a week, as said yesterday when I was hanging out of the bathroom window, and I don't feel like I will either do well or that anything I do now will make me do well. I hate revision - who doesn't? - but I particularly hate memorising things. It makes me feel stupid, ie, I'm-so-lacking-in-conceptual-understanding-that-I-have-to-memorise-it-and-regurgitate-it-on-command.

I'm not lacking in conceptual understanding, and I have a good memory. But I'm not good enough, never quite good enough. I almost got a Harrison scholarship this year, because I almost got nine A*s at GCSE, and I almost achieved something. But I never do achieve anything, because there's always "almost" or "nearly" or "mitigating circumstances." I am so sick of never, never being quite good enough. In the end, the people who are like me and almost are forgotten. And now, in a week's time, I have even more exams to fail at. Chemistry is all right, probably - I got an A for my mock (not almost, I did) and I can do it again. For Politics, I got a B, and not even almost an A, and for Biology, I got almost a B, which is a C because who cares about almost.

A-levels are hard. I hate it that I have to say that, as if I were five years old or terminally inconsequential. I hate people who say they didn't do/get/receive such-and-such, "but it's okay 'cause [such-and-such] is hard." At the risk of sounding American, well, duh. If it weren't, it wouldn't be worth achieving, ne?

GCSEs are not hard. They are not - at least, they weren't for me. And I'm very sorry if I'm being offensive, but I am also being truthful. That's why the almost was unforgivable. They weren't hard and I was perfectly capable; and still, no. And I also hate being told "you did your best" - because that implies that you did your best, and you still weren't good enough. That's the worst thing.

And the worst thing about all of this is, I suppose, the fact I am doing A-levels for no real reason. My mother has chosen to forget I told her I didn't want to do medicine. She talks about how I need to "hurry up and make a decision" when I already have, and she's purposely forgotten. What she means is, "hurry up and do medicine." And now Pedar, who was always on my side, is beginning to lean towards my doing medicine as well. When I told him that I'd decided and didn't want to be a doctor, he didn't selectively forget, but he did say I shouldn't make a decision now (when? six months from now?) and sometimes discusses medical specalities I might be good at. I may be overreacting to that, but maybe not.

So, I'm doing A-levels so I can do medicine - the fact that two of them are humanities is simply to make me look versatile on my UCAS form. I could do something other than medicine but I'm not good enough - only almost. It feels so much like medicine is all I'm good for, and I won't even be a particularly good doctor.

I even almost got a job last week - it was the second time I'd almost got it.

So my life as it stands is becoming steadily more pointless. I may as well not go to bed and stay up watching Red Dwarf - it doesn't matter what I do.

Comments

[absolutism.livejournal.com]

i really despise when parents do that. 'you need to make a decision,' when they know as well as you do that any decision you make on your own will conveniently be disregarded. maybe i am too quick to stick my nose into other people's affairs, but it really gets under my skin that such a talented and creative writer as yourself is seemingly being forced into something where those gifts would go to waste. well.. 'go to waste' is a harsh way of putting it, i think. rather, where those gifts would not serve the purpose they were meant to serve. i suppose that makes a little more sense. as always, i advise you to do whatever the hell you want, even at the risk of disappointing your parents. you are right.. almost does not count. but, believe it or not, there are some arenas in life where it really doesn't even matter.

ps: i hate testing. i don't know if the testing you're talking about is standardized, but if it is, then i give another thumbs down. testing is idiotic. it compares your intelligence.. no, not even your intelligence. it compares your test-taking 'skills' to the 'skills' of other people when really, the only person that you have to complete against is yourself. .. blah. the bane of my existence, i say. no one needs to 'know' how to take a test.

pss: forgive me for just butting in. :x

[osiris13.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be unsympathetic, and I understand how you fell believe it or not. When your head wants to explode and you fell like screaming, and your marks are still too low for your liking. I know, believe me. And I also know I haven't been at school with you for almost 6 six years.

But, I also know that you were always brilliant at what you found interesting. At the time it was space. I don't mean that you should try harder, because I know that isn't the answer or the problem. You know what I mean. I mean that you are the most intelligent person I know, and don't you ever forget that. Maybe you got a C in your biology mock, so what, it doesn't mean anything, and it doesn't count. Don't give up! Not yet anyway.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

You know what I would like to do? I would like to take you by the arm and drag you down to see a careers' officer. No, seriously, I would. Careers officers have a horrible reputation, but if there's one thing they're good at, it's making you think that your opinion of What You Want To Be is worthwhile, even though it doesn't match what your parents think perfectly.

OK, firstly, A levels are hard. It's not just that the work is hard - it is, but as you say, anything worth doing is hard - it's that there is something uniquely stressful and horrible about the kind of hard that A levels are. I got a first class degree from one of the best English departments in the country, and a distinction in my masters and I'm now doing a PhD, and none of that has been as stressful as certain parts of my A levels are.

I think the main thing is that you have to achieve a really, really high standard but in a really heavily constrained field. At degree level, you have to achieve a much higher standard - obviously - but the emphasis, at least in arts, is in the way you learn and the way you write and you can go and find topics that fascinate you. You can't do that at A level. The other horrendous thing about A levels is the sheer pressure of feeling like your entire life will be decided by those three or four letters: one syllabus, one exam, one grade, one results' day, one chance. God, I remember it and it's awful.

So take comfort in that: the fact that you're finding A levels horribly stressful isn't because you're simply not clever enough, it's some magic way that A levels have of being far more stressful than exams which are objectively harder. So you don't react well to the kind of stress that A levels induce. Well, that's so not a problem, because there probably isn't any job in the world that requires you to work well under specifically the kind of stress that A levels induce!

(Almost everyone else on my degree course had got AAB or AAA in their A levels, where as I only got a pitiful ABC. Only 5% of us got firsts, though, so screw you, A levels!)

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Secondly, look at this paragraph:
I could do something other than medicine but I'm not good enough - only almost. It feels so much like medicine is all I'm good for, and I won't even be a particularly good doctor.

No, seriously, look at that paragraph. I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you do know objectively that it's absolute rubbish, don't you? I completely, totally understand that it feels like the only choice is Doctor or Failure, but it's absolutely not true.

You're in the first year of A levels. You have so much time. You don't have to make a UCAS decision until September, and that's if you're super hyper organised (which, admittedly, you probably have to be if you want to do medicine!) - and even then it's nine months away. In the meantime, you're going to have talks from your teachers, visits to universities, visits from people at universities, careers evenings - seriously, in terms of how much you know about possible careers, possible university choices, subjects and systems, you are about to start one of the biggest learning curves you've been on since you were a toddler! I know this because it was my job for a year.

Six months can be a long time. Talk to careers staff, talk to your teachers (they know you nearly as well as your parents, but have much less invested in Iona The Doctor!), get university prospectuses and look at the medicine sections, the journalism sections, the chemistry sections, the politics sections, whatever you fancy. Look at things like psychology or even business subjects that aren't typical A level subjects, so they accept people with A levels in other subects (and adore people with mixed science and arts or social science subjects.) I know you mentioned in an earlier post that your mother worries that any area other than medicine is still influenced by racism: I really have my doubts about that, but if it's something that worries you then get in touch with the Asian or Indian or Hindu student societies at Liverpool or Manchester universities and have a chat with students who are studying there now.

And never, ever forget that what the vast majority of us do these days is go to university to a general arts or science degree and then specialise afterwards, when we have a much clearer idea of what we want. Degree in chemistry followed by a one year postgrad course in journalism? Fabulous: journalism's desperate for people with a scientific background instead of an arts background. Degree followed by civil service exam? Degree followed by one year law conversion course?

Don't fret. Revising sucks, but it's all you have to worry about for now. The other stuff will come in time, and It Will All Be OK.

s(Sorry about the huge posts: this kind of thing was my job for a year after i graduated and whilst I hated the job itself, I'm still kind of enthusiastic about the actual information itself!)

[hathy-col.livejournal.com]

All the comments on this have said all the things that I meant to do. I went through a "I'm not good enough" thing about a year ago, and I remember how desperately awful I felt, as though nothing I ever did would ever matter- there'd be a moment of commendation and then nothing. All my achievements were worth jack, because they weren't the best. I wasn't the best writer, I wasn't the best as history (being the second highest in the year hurt so badly), I was always second best...

It was a sucky, terrible feeling. All I wanted to do was crash and burn badly, just to make a point. I flipped at my parents every time they told me I'd do fabulously, because all I wanted to scream was "No, I won't! I won't be the best! What's the point in that?"

I still feel like that, a lot. It still sucks. It's better now I'm at Winstanley, and it most definitely improved when I sacked off dancing, which I really wasn't the best at.

Gah, this is a load of crap and I'm terrible at knowing what to say at this kind of thing. So, I say this:

You are intelligent, and you have the drive to go with it. I'm jealous of you, do you know that? I wish I wasn't so damned lazy, I wish I had half of your IQ, and I wish that I could write the way you do.

You will kick ass at whatever you decide to do. That might be anything.

At some point, you are going to have a Very Big Argument with your mother. It will be huge. You will say you don't want to b a doctor. She will say that you do. You will say that, no, actually, I'd like to do a degree in Subject X. And somewhere along the line, she will agree. When you get down to it, she's your mum. She loves you. She also wants to the best for you, and she's convinced that this is doctoring, because she's trying to shelter you from a disappointment in another career. If you can convice her that no, you'l be just fine in this career, and you have evidence to back it up, she might just acquiese. It's your life, when you get down to it.

Blah. This still doesn't make sense. What can I say other than 'I Believe In You'? Cliche, perhaps, but true.

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

I loathe any system that purports to measure achievement, understanding, and worth on the basis of a single exam. Exams, when you get right down to it, measure exam-taking ability much more than they rank your understanding of anything. Scores can be thrown off by a headache, bad sleep the night before -- many variables which can't be controlled for.

I agree with all the previous comments. I do not see Dr. Iona. I see Iona, Journalist. Did you catch my post of last night about the idiot "advice" I've been given recently? That I abjure poetry and black clothing, and write "nice normal stories"? At some point you have to take your life in your hands, and force your courage to the sticking point, and say I am not that, I am this. And if that changes anyone's feelings toward you, including your parents'... that will be hard, but ultimately their loss.

You are NOT your exam scores. You are a whole, feeling, living human being with a fine mind. And IMNSHO, it would be a waste to be an indifferent doctor when you could be a superb something else. Besides, who the hell wants to be treated by an indifferent doctor? If I'm ever thrown in hospital with a bad appendix or something, I want the one whose heart, mind, and soul are fully in the job!

Please be gentle with yourself.

[lilka.livejournal.com]

I wish I could do what these lovely, lovely people do, and be articulate and reasoned and helpful in response to this. But the only thing I think I can really say is: You are good enough. You are good enough for anything that you want to do. You are better than just good. I believe that, and I believe it because it's true. You should too. And so, for that matter, should your parents.

[ex-senza930.livejournal.com]

Academic pressure is, I think, one of the worst kinds. Especially during high school, which consumes a big chunk of your life. If there's anything I've come to realise, though, it's that you can't let your academic performnance define your sense of self-worth. I've learned that the hard way. I've been a complete wreck for at least the last two months, attempting to stay on top of school work and college applications, all the while questioning incessantly my qualifications, intelligence, ability. It made me so tired. It's not worth it. I suspect you know that. But I just hate to see you do it, because I am painfully aware of how counterproductive it really is.

I don't know you very well, granted, but, if your entries are any indication, you have this wonderful sense of balance in your life. You never seem to let any one aspect consume you entirely. Honestly, I envy that kind of perspective, and I hope you never lose it.

You know what else? You look at the world so uniquely. You write about life with humour and insight and intelligence, and that's infinitely more valuable than anything an exam can measure. High school seems so terribly important now. I know it is, to an extent, but five years from now, it'll be a blurred memory relegated to obscurity. These are not the best years of our lives. The utter pointlessness cannot possibly persist. And I'm sure that, somehow, you'll find some way to do what you love. It'll all work out in the end. That's my new mantra. Three parts comfort, one part naivete, two parts blind faith in the inherent goodness of the universe. It's surprisingly effective. :)

Anyway. I shan't ramble any longer.

I hope you feel better soon.

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right: GCSEs are easy. And, in five years time when you've graduated, you'll quite probably be saying the same thing about your A Levels. You will do fine in them, becuase you *are* very clever. And then you'll go to uni and do some degree or other. And, whatever that degree is, it will not greatly impact your future career: maybe they will get you to train as a doctor. Doesn't mean that you have to do it for the rest of your life, hon.

Even if they do convince you that the thing to do is put medicine on your UCAS form, you'd be mad to put it down as all of the options (especially as, iirc from when my clever proto-doctor type friends were doing them) there are only about four places that it's worth you going to to train. So put other things that you might want to do, like a more specialised medical area, down as the other options.

But I still don't think that you should go and do something stupid like media studies, 'kay?

[non-contact-hugs]

You'll be ok, sweetie.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I never know how to respond to this sort of thing, because it would be hypocritical of me to say, "Don't worry so much, of course you're good enough." I know what it's like to feel directionless, to feel as though you're always falling short, and having someone tell you otherwise doesn't necessarily help. I wish it did; I really wish it did.

For what it's worth, I respect you about as much as I respect anyone in the world, and I love you, and I think you're brilliant -- and not one of those is something I am capable of experiencing or saying easily. That's all I can give you, unfortunately. I have no advice, except to listen to the people above who know better than I. Feel better.