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| Source: Max Pixel |
Normally, my coaching sessions would be nice and pleasant. An hour-long girl’s chat with Coach Jennifer about my week, especially my struggles and thoughts. Usually, these struggles would be about food, but sometimes we’d talk about my struggles in other areas. More often than not, Coach Jennifer patiently listen to me and would provide impactful and simple advice.
However, during this last session, she had to get tough with me.
And she’s making me talk about my experiences in this blog post.
(Takes deep breath) So here it goes...
For 10 years now, I have carried resentment and regret for my performance in high school.
Not that I was a bad student. My GPA out of high school was 3.25. I also participated in my fair share of activities such as HOSA and FBLA.
My hangup?
I was ranked 36th in my class.
Now, if you know my graduating class, there were about 108-110 of us. So to the untrained eye, I did pretty well still, right?
Well, my problem is that I was (and still sort of am) a perfectionist.
I knew that I wasn’t going to be valedictorian. Much of my 10th grade year promised that (especially Geometry and history), but I still thought that I would be ranked in the top 20.
But then I got my ranking.
I.
Was.
Devastated.
Rinse and repeat in college, but this time I finished with a 2.77 GPA. (I failed calculus twice, an English class, a chemistry class, and got a failure to attend in my psychology writing class.)
Clearly, there was no “anything” cum laude.
No medals.
No honor cords.
Nothing.
Despite the smiles in my pictures, despite finishing with a B.S. degree in Psychology, despite being the first person to finish college in my family since my uncle in the 1980s; I was miserable.
Surely, I thought that my college performance would make up for not excelling in high school, but I did worse.
All my life, school had been my thing. Making the “A” or “A/B” honor roll was nothing foreign to me, especially from pre-K to 5th grade (I would still receive the honors periodically from 6th grade on). Now, without the grades, the GPAs, or the coverings of clout in the form of medals or honor cords, I felt like nothing.
And we’re just talking about grades. I’m not even going to get into talking about standardized test scores and the fact I did zero internships in college.
I felt like I had let everybody down. In fact, I knew that I let myself down. Given my present reality, I thought that if I had done everything right, gotten the grades and made the connections and stuff, I would be rewarded with a life of success and freedom from pain and disappointment.
So after giving Coach Jennifer a slightly more condensed version about my experiences in high school and college, she asked me a simple question:
“What if your experience in high school went the way that it was supposed to?”
…
Huh?
Sis, what?
I didn’t really have an answer for her. After all, if everything went the way it was supposed to, using society’s measure of success, I would probably be much happier and better off than I am now.
“Nothing. Went. Wrong.” She said afterwards.
I never really thought about it like that before. Because I wasn’t swimming with accolades, scholarships and other monies, and people begging me to be a part of their school or staff, I thought I was a failure.
Despite my rebuttals, she told me that I was playing the victim. Again, I never thought of it that way before. I thought “playing the victim” was something external, something malicious or narcissistic people did did when they were trying to get something like money and/or sympathy.
She followed that up by reminding me of my power, telling me that I make the decision for what success looks like.
Needless to say, I was shook after that coaching session.
If that wasn’t enough, I received confirmation of the need for a mindset shift when I had the exact same conversation with my mom not even 15 minutes later.
So with all of that said, I have quite a bit of work ahead of me, and I’m not just talking about the homework Coach Jennifer gave me (this was the biggest assignment!). Rather, I have to work on undoing all the years of having thoughts that didn’t serve me. The thoughts of being the victim, believing my happiness and success to be at the mercy of grades, awards, and people.
All of these experiences happened, and they happened the way they were supposed to. Moreover, they’re all in the past and I can’t keep living there.
Nothing.
Went.
Wrong.
