When I first started college people expected me to quit and drop out because of my lack of enthusiasm for attending school. I never understood their reasoning and to this day I still don’t. I don’t know many people who are constantly enthusiastic about attending classes and getting more work to do. It’s true I have no enthusiasm for attending my classes or for the large work load I get, but this doesn’t mean that I wanted to quit school. Not once did it cross my mind that I should drop out of school and I never planned on it.

Now, I’m a 3rd year student going into my second semester, I haven’t quit and still don’t plan to. I instead have taken the maximum amount of credits I possibly can every semester and working as hard as I can to pass my classes. This has taken a toll on me mentally and physically. I have never been a good student, my grades are always average at best but working so hard for so many classes and only obtaining average grades stresses me out and also makes me believe that I’m not a good student and the work is usually too hard for me. These times leave me stressed and lacking sleep so that I can try to finish all my work and hope for a good grade. In the end I always finish off with average grades.

The average grades that I get have started a new discussions of what people expect of me. Because I obviously haven’t quit school yet, the next expectation is that I won’t get into grad school and I “can just forget about any dream I had of attending grad school because no one will ever accept my average grades”. I can’t lie and say that it doesn’t it hurt when I’m told this because it does especially coming from the person who says it. I’ll continue on however and keep looking into where I want to go and where I want to be and maybe for once I’ll live for me and not for the expectations of others.