Remember last year when I took a year off to go and learn solely for the sake of learning?
I'm trying to refind that passion.
It's not that there weren't any grades involved. There were. But they honestly didn't matter. At that point, I'd already been accepted to Duke; they didn't even request to see my grades during my year off. I don't know if they knew there were grades involved. And of course I always strived to get the best grade I possibly could. But at the end of the day, the grades only mattered to me personally; nothing else was riding on these grades. At the end of the day, I was working hard because I wanted to.
Well, here at Duke, grades are important again. They do determine my future.
I'm trying to work hard again because I want to. But it's hard.
I'm in a lot of classes that I don't completely understand. (Math 212 should be renamed Mulitvariable Calculus: Unvarying Confusion.) It's really frustrating. And I'm in a lot of classes out of pure requirement. I don't really love chemistry, but it's a required course for engineers. And I understand the importance of these courses, and I still enjoy learning. But at the end of the day, am I putting all of this effort into these courses so that I can learn, or just so I can get a decent grade?
Even my Chinese class, the sole subject of my last year's endeavors, has become more of a burden in my mind. It's just another hard class on top of my already hard classes. I find myself frustrated at myself for using the one elective course I get as a freshman engineering student on this extremely hard 407 level course instead of taking an easier GPA-booster. And it's not even that I have a bad grade in the course!
It's frustrating that I've become so concerned about grades once again. That I am not having fun reviewing for these classes.
But I also have to remind myself, even last year when the grades didn't matter, there were times that I was putting in a lot of effort into studying when I didn't actually want to. Did that make me not want to learn the subject? Did it mean that I wasn't a good student?
We all get burnt out. Even doing things that we're passionate about. (And trust me, I'm not really that passionate about multi.) Sometimes it's a little daunting, when all of a sudden things that we loved once become a chore. But most of the time it's just a rough patch. The chores slowly become enjoyable again. It takes time, and a great deal of frustration. But it's okay.
So I'm going to return to doing practice tests. I won't really enjoy doing them in prep for my finals a few days away. And it'll be frustrating, running into so many things throughout the course that I still don't understand. And I'll get worried about the grade I'll be able to make on the final because of these many things I don't understand.
But it's okay.
Besides, after this week, I won't have to deal with these classes ever again.
And yes, I did decide to overload next semester with the next level of Chinese. And my grades will suffer, taking 5 really hard classes rather than just 4 really hard classes. But that's okay. Because I want to learn.
