We haven’t been back in school for more than three days and we’re already stressing about the January exams, which will happen on the 22nd for English literature, English language, and History.
Which are all going to be flipping impossible because they’re all scheduled in the morning. What a marvellous day I have to look forward to, right? Sigh.
The tests are of course hugely important because they will grade the whole of the last term, and will make up a huge percentage of the final marks come summer. Stress stress stress.
“Run little monkey”, I am tempted to shout into the mirror. “Faster stronger harder”. Instead I’m going to get some tea and relieve the aggressions in a computer game this evening since Mark is away to a meeting of his LGBT-club. This time they’re meeting at another member of the board’s house.
***
I have become such a study worm, haven’t I? When did this happen? When did my marks become so hugely important to me that I’m stressing over them like that? It didn’t use to be like that.
A couple of years ago, I was quite nonchalant about the whole thing. I can’t really say that my ambitions are different, and that it’s my goals that have changed. Now? Now it seems like it’s all I care about: get good grades. It’s like a competition.
Maybe I’m really a competitive person, and maybe what I want to achieve the least is mediocrity. Mediocrity seems to be such a lazy outcome. It’s not the spectacularity of a failing grade, nor the effort of a good one. It is just ‘meh’. I don’t want to be a ‘meh’ person, maybe.
***
Being a ‘meh’ person seems to me to be the worst outcome of a life. You’re neither the rebel that turns everything on its head, not the champion that pushes the envelope. The ‘meh’-person just sits there, content with what is, and grows moss on the mind until the crust on the mind is all that defines that person.
The meh-person even revels in this mediocrity, and claims it is the superior state, when the truth is that mediocrity is non-experience. It is mere existence, as opposed to the suffering of the failure or the effort of the champion. Both the failure and the champion, it seems to me, learn and develop and progress and becomes more.
The mediocre person never develop, never change, never strive, never challenge, never think beyond the banal patters that have been established before. I don’t want to be that person. Perhaps that is why I’ve become such a study worm these last few years.
I hope all that amounts to anything, but I don’t know that. I look at the future, and it’s totally opaque. All I know is that at least it won’t be boring. I just hope it won’t be one of suffering and failure. Even if that is better than being mediocre, I’d rather be the champion that forge ahead than the one that live in pain and regret. But I think I’d even prefer the suffering life ahead of being self-rightously contented with the meh.
I can’t imagine you ever being a “meh” person Colin. Of course exams are stressful but if you don’t stretch yourself you never advance, especially when you’re young. You are at a point in your life when exams ARE important and if you weren’t stressing about them and concerned about your grades I’d be worried for you! Stick at it, it doesn’t last for ever and it’ll be over soon enough. Then you can party
This thought of the “meh” person being the antithesis of the rebel or champion is interesting. I refuse to think that all people ought to be world-changing champions or rebels, or that we should feel that those who are content where they are somehow worse people. For one thing, we can’t all be famous authors, artists, or revolutionaries. Perhaps there is a fourth type besides rebel, champion, or meh-person. The meh-person I think of as apathetic, whereas I think of the content person as someone who cares about their life, but who is not “bothered” by ambition or fear of failure.
This all coming from an individual with a constant fear of being a meh-person. Those of us who strive to break out of mediocrity might tend to lump all the others in with the meh-people, but I’m not sure that’s healthy. In any case, I definitely get where you’re coming from.
I wonder how media plays into this as well. You know, the films where the man with the boring office job is forced to realize that he’s missing out on life through an unexpected adventure.
Anyways, I’m long-time “lurker” here, and I can’t wait to see what happens in your life! Good luck on those tests!
Notice how you get fewer responses for posts like this?
Doesn’t mean we’re bored, just that your self-expression sometimes makes commentary irrelevant. Other than offering a comforting “There, there…”