I got my grades back for the program. A 1,52. I felt initially okay with that, because I thought it would be much worse. The whole experience has been challenging, very frustrating, and painful.
Then I found out that it was just ,02 away from the higher boundary. Like I’m one day born after the cut off for Capricorn. And that was the final straw for me. Because it felt like it was there mocking me, telling me that I thought this was going to be okay and look how they tricked me. How I struggled and felt so awful and disillusioned. But in my thesis bubble things picked up, I felt good about it and could look at it as a learning experience.
I would have said I had gathered perspective. But now this ,02 comes back to kick me down again because it brings back all the memories of why it is even that low. To explain though, the cut off was from 1-1.5 (A) and then 1.51-2.5 (I don’t know what that translates to in the US). And it’s like all those teachers who couldn’t teach and were bad and couldn’t tell me what they wanted are back. And it’s like those mandatory trips I had to go on which were expensive, more than they said, are back. It’s like those times where they wouldn’t even tell us what was graded until too late are back. All of these horrible moments, all those feelings of sadness and anger are back.
Thinking back on these years and these feelings returning making it feel like, for what did I do this?
This just feels like the final straw on my pile of straws and my piles of gripes and uncertainty and I feel like it’s mocking me. I thought I was clear of this and finished, finally finished with feeling wasted, awful, and sad. I felt I ended on a high note, a good feeling.
And then this comes, to tell me there is no justice here. There is no feeling of security, of making it, of triumphing. You don’t get rewarded for trying your hardest, more than others to succeed. You don’t get rewarded for spending hours of work or for going to office hours early to be first. You don’t get rewarded for feeling like things turned around.
And that’s what I have to get used to. You don’t get rewarded when the system is dysfunctional and doesn’t work, when it can’t and won’t help you, when it won’t be clear, when things are challenging. Even when the very system you live in doesn’t work (not even your fault) you don’t get a break, you don’t get rewarded or even points for trying. You get nothing.
When there are no guidelines, no rules, and a lack of good professors you don’t get rewarded for trying your best at those odds. You get what you get, that’s it. You don’t get condolences, sorrys, or help. In the face of it all you get nothing, no help, no support, no avenue to talk to, and no hope of change.
You are a number. You get to be a number, because numbers don’t have feelings or justice of senses of right and wrong. They get to be numbers and go through life as numbers. Their feelings of injustice don’t count. And nothing they do can change that.