academia

when did I become such a bad student?

this morning I emailed my statistics professor requesting a withdrawal from the course. I will now have a W on my transcript. I feel pretty damn guilty and a little embarrassed because, well, I’m a full time student, which is such a privilege, and my basic responsibility is to take classes, learn something from them, and try to do well. I feel like I am not taking full advantage of this privilege. My parents shell out far too much money for me to get this “elite” education; I will be immersed in student loans by the time I graduate. Of course I have to take school seriously.

And I do, for the most part. But basically, this first year in college has dissipated any harbored inklings for a future in academia. I am not a serious scholar. I am not cut out to be a serious scholar.

However, I’m fairly certain I made the right decision. I did fine on the midterm and my problem sets will probably average out to a B, but the final exam is 50% of the final grade, and I would be straight-up deluding myself if I said I’d been keeping up with the coursework after the midterm 5th week. If I studied all day today and all night tonight, I would probably still barely scrape by, and I don’t really want to do that to my GPA right now. To take it Pass/Fail is pointless, because I need this course for my major and P/F doesn’t garner credit toward your major. Plus, I don’t want to cram for 20 hours, take a 2 hour exam, and then collapse in exhaustion. Not only does that almost certainly mean forgetting the material immediately, but that’s also 22 hours detracted from studying for my 3 other classes. I can still take stats later—most students take it their third year— and when I take it the next time around, I can try harder to keep up with the coursework.

This is kind of the obligatory, don’t-bite-off-more-than-you-can-chew freshman year lesson, isn’t it? Maybe taking four classes, of which only one is Core, during your first performing season, which demands 20 hours of rehearsal/performance time each week, is feasible, but it doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable. Why did I push this on myself? After all my rambling about academia being a privilege, it seems contradictory to say that I should be more self-indulgent, but maybe to really get the most out of this academic experience, I need to make the experience as self-satisfying as possible. The goal, I think, is not to emerge at the end of four years, burnt out and exhausted, proudly touting a degree (or maybe two degrees.) looking over your transcript to see that I took 4 classes every quarter, and sighing, “man I made it through.” The goal is to look back and feel refreshed, to feel challenged and engaged, to be proud of what I’ve done, sure, but most of all to be able to say that I’ve enjoyed the ride, at least to a certain extent.