Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
Balance
I have once again become competitive. At some point in second year university, I gave up; I accepted average. Accepting average coincided with me discovering the power of being female, the excitement of dating. Perhaps my desire to have the highest mark was transferred to a desire to have the most boyfriends, the most boys wanting to date me. Let's get one thing straight: I am not a stereotypically attractive person. How I managed to date as many people as I did is astounding. That I did, though, and that at the same time my grades plummeted from an A average to a B average is not coincidence.
However, now that I am (however unsteadily) cohabitating, and that my desire to seek male attention has faded to virtually nothing (after a brief, fun month or two, when first surrounded by the age of boys that I once preyed upon), I have relapsed back to an A average. Actually, at this point, I have an A+ average.
I am a fast test writer. I can usually finish a test in about 60% of the given test time. I can then spend the next 20% of the test time meticulously checking all of my algebra and notation, and then I can confidently leave the test 20% early. I smile, hand in my test, and glance around at the other students still madly writing. I have gotten 100% on my last three math tests, my last physics test, and my last surveying test. Moreover, my mark on the surveying test was 106% because of scaling. Sickening, really. Depending on the course, I am somewhere in the top 4 students in the program. Take that, MALE engineers.
The problem is Daniel. He thinks that I should study less, spend more time having fun, and accept a B average. This is true, perhaps, for the more normally socialized person. For me, however, studying is an escape. Studying means that I do not have to make small-talk with people at the pub. It means that I can sit in the quiet corners of the library and work through pages of equations, working my favourite pencil and slowly-shrinking eraser. Knowing that I can, and do, get 100% motivates me to study more.
So, balance. Have I ever been a really balanced person? Never for a very long period of time...
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