To Jean - Regarding your post on 13th August 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008 @ 8:01 pm.
I was about to post this on your tagboard, but I think it would be too long.
Okay, I have no idea if what I just wrote has anything to do with what I was trying to say. But cheer up, Jean!
Sorry if I made any misunderstandings. Please feel free to ignore this post.
Or you could reply back. No matter what it says.
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This section is for everyone. But addressed to Jean too.
I'm going to tell you a deep, dark, not-so-secret secret thing that I am/was very sad about. It was very similar to this. Diana, Jelly, CSJY (the name in her profile), my sister and my father should know about this.
Anyway, for ISO (equivalent to Project Work) we got offered an alternative to the regular program everyone else was taking to do a writing-based project. We would all write a Scenario (yes, capitalised), based on a Future Scene at least 20 years in the future.
So I wrote. I had a plot. I had characters. I knew exactly how I was going to write it. Our teacher (name not disclosed) liked it. She said it was good. She passed it around in class, as I heard from someone. Others liked it. I was happy.
And then we sent in the Draft Submission (yes, capitalised). I was so happy, I let it get to my head a little. I spent the June holidays wondering what results I would get, what the comments would say, things like that. The day our teacher told us that the results were in from Australia, I couldn't wait. I wanted to see.
Then I saw the results.
At first I thought, it couldn't be that bad. Maybe the others got similar marks. Maybe it was a mistake or something. And then I caught glimpses of other's sheets, asked discreetly. My fantasies dissolved.
I sat at the computer screen morosely highlighting sections of my Scenario. I discovered a mistake in the totaling up by our teacher, bringing my already dismal marks down by two. I made my way down to the canteen, selecting something I could buy without saying anything; a bottle of Pink Dolphin. Then I sat down on a yellow bench and started to cry.
Goodness knows how my sister found me. But she let me cry on her shoulder for a while. She offered to help. I nodded, and I went to the toilets with the purpose of washing my face but instead I locked myself in a stall and cried some more (silently).
It was a childish thing to do. I know that. I went home and tried to console myself with watching Whose Line is it Anyway? on YouTube. When my father went home I tried to talk professionally about it with him but it just ended up with me sniffing and hiccuping again. It ended with me e-mailing our teacher at 23 55 h to seek advice as he suggested later (she mentioned later that I seemed very upset about it, I don't have much memory of what happened while I was doing it).
I couldn't get it out of my head, you know. CSJY had got 44/50. Diana had got 42. Jelly had got 40. I got 27.
27.
27.
And that number floated everywhere in my head. It wasn't until the day before the second draft was due that I brought myself to edit my Scenario once again. And oh no, it didn't stop there. For three weeks, I edited, edited, and kept editing, and each time it wasn't enough. With every draft, a list of comments came back, and they always seemed the same no matter how much I changed it. Our teacher extended deadlines for me. At the second-last draft, she called me and went through it again, pointing out the same things, and different things, and finally a context change which although seemed very minor, meant many major changes in my writing. She later asked me why I put down the phone so abruptly. This is why.
After I hung up, I cupped my face in my hands and started to cry again.
Well, my father came home around then and we had the same talk all over again. And the next day, I churned out my last, final draft and put it in our teacher's pigeonhole. And now, I have no more expectations.
I felt two things, predominantly, during that time. The first was that I was stuck in a rut and I just couldn't get out.
The second was that I felt inferior.
(This part is to Jean.)
Jean, I know very well what you mean when you say you don't have any more interest in the violin. There's nothing wrong with that.
My father told me to stop comparing myself with others, because that was the more prominent thing that was causing my acute misery. I think that's the case with you too. You already have it established that interest is not the problem, it's a fact. So that's that.
As I mentioned before on your tagboard, PASS is not a bad thing. It is, however, when you compare it with people's MERITs, or DISTINCTIONs. It's all relative. You said yourself, you don't have any more interest in the violin. So why are you so "emo" about it? Because your sister beat you by eight marks.
So if you take away the "beaten by eight marks" factor, you have a good solid pass. In Grade 8. Which is the highest you can go without specialising in a diploma, which you are not going to do, as you said. And that is an achievement. I only PASSed my Grade 5 Piano Examinations with perfect score in aural (which means to say my pieces were bad) AND I made one/two false starts in the third piece, and that is still an achievement.
Don't view yourself so negatively. If it counts, I think you play very well.
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Okay, I have no idea if what I just wrote has anything to do with what I was trying to say. But cheer up, Jean!
Sorry if I made any misunderstandings. Please feel free to ignore this post.
Or you could reply back. No matter what it says.