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Hello Teamliquid, just another one of my blogs.
So my junior year of high school is almost over. It has been such a stressful time for me. I have had so many after school activities that I participate in. I am the varsity goalie for soccer, in theater, part of robotics, choir, and in the National Honors Society.
In soccer, we made it to the district finals for the first time in school history. I have a lead in the musical, and this was our first year for robotics which went very well. My grades slipped a little by about .2, so not a big deal. I am in the advanced choir and we made it to state solo and ensemble. I took the ACT and received a 26. My goal was a 28, but a 26 gets me into the university I want.
Yet, with all of the success I feel like such a failure. I've been so stressed about my grades that I considered dropping theater. I feel like I could have done so much more this year, and yet I don't know what. I am so stressed about the end of the year, yet I don't know why.
Maybe it is because I have reflected on my past and wish I did more. I wish I spent that extra hour after practice on the soccer field. I wish I developed better study habits in middle school. I wish I could have worked on time management before reaching high school. I just think what COULD have been if I put a little more effort into what matters most to me. Once I reached high school I realized the importance of that extra hour of practicing and studying. I realized I need to manage my time better. I realized too late though. It hit me and knocked me on my ass.
Now that my junior year is almost up, I know that I can't reach what I want because of this. I can't play soccer at a good college, I can't get into top universities, and I can't get good parts in musicals. I just feel like such a failure, and writing this out definitely makes me feel a little better.
Thank you for taking the time to read TL 
 
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colleges like extracurricular activities
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Because no matter how good you are, you always know you could be better. And it's true, you always have more potential. But just because you could be better doesn't mean you should get yourself down. You should tell yourself how awesome you are.
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for some reason i can't empathize. please step back and get some perspective on how good your life is.
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Ok, I'm gonna be honest with you right here. I was in your position, grades took a small slip, nothing huge, tons of after school activities, worked on a political campaign as an intern for an important congressman, the whole shabang. TAKE THE ACT OVER AGAIN AND GET A 32; I'm not kidding. That is what fucked me over, and it will fuck you over too. This year that was a lot of what mattered, next year it will too. College rankings have become a big thing and now that U.S. news and world report has changed the rankings, you need a great ACT, your grades, everything doesn't matter nearly as much as your score now. You need a 30 dude, I'm not joking here. Your life may be great, but you need the whole package if you want to be highly competitive. You might feel unsuccessful now, but you will feel great if you get into your favorite college.
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Canada13403 Posts
You are simply realising that you want to master something but can't master everything at once.
Instead of telling you what to do specifically, I think you should look up the stages of mastery. Read through it and realize everyone goes through similar feeling, and try to figure out what to do.
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On May 04 2013 13:34 docvoc wrote:
Ok, I'm gonna be honest with you right here. I was in your position, grades took a small slip, nothing huge, tons of after school activities, worked on a political campaign as an intern for an important congressman, the whole shabang. TAKE THE ACT OVER AGAIN AND GET A 32; I'm not kidding. That is what fucked me over, and it will fuck you over too. This year that was a lot of what mattered, next year it will too. College rankings have become a big thing and now that U.S. news and world report has changed the rankings, you need a great ACT, your grades, everything doesn't matter nearly as much as your score now. You need a 30 dude, I'm not joking here. Your life may be great, but you need the whole package if you want to be highly competitive. You might feel unsuccessful now, but you will feel great if you get into your favorite college.
If you are in the states, I would consider a less stressful route. Go community and transfer.
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Honestly if your still in high school, you have no idea what success and failure is
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The first times you feel like a failure will indicate how you deal with failures through out your life. Use these opportunities to construct a resilient mindset.
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I can't imagine how many students like the OP stress out on something so unimportant as school. I also can't understand why people take it so seriously. Stressing out to get good grades and into good schools... Maybe it's just me, but my time spent in school taking classes that were not related to my major was laptop + study my major time. And I went to a great school (ranked #9 for engineering). And I did well in those classes because I picked professors I knew would be easy.
Maybe you feel like a failure because you haven't devoted time to actually learning anything in depth. Most people I know are like this. Do you actually have a skill - something that you've devoted your free time to and have an honest mastery in? Or do you simply do what's required of you and cross your fingers and hope it will all be good once you're in a good college? This "as long as I get good grades i'll be fine" attitude? I've got nothing against diversity, but diversity for the sake of diversity is pointless. My suggestion to you is focus more on what you want to become. Once you realize that X is what you want to do, you will stop worrying about silly things like soccer (unless that's what you want to do, in which case you'll stop worrying about musicals).
Let me also just say - maybe this advice is a little too sage for a high school student. I honestly can't recall my mentality in high school, but what I've come to realize in the working world is that nobody cares about your extracurriculars, they want to see that you actually know what the hell you're doing.
And also - I think this is a good time to learn opportunity cost. Every second you spend wasting time doing something is time you can spend getting better at what you actually want to do.
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There's no point in killing yourself with all those extra-curriculars if you're going to be burned out by the time you get into whatever university you want to go to. Figure out which parts you enjoy, and which parts you can cut out. You don't have to be superman to be happy, OR to get into the school you want to go to. Grades are probably more important than your 4th extra curricular.
Also I agree with docvoc on retaking the ACT, and maybe the SAT. Always take them at least a second time, you're pretty much guaranteed to do better. I went from a 1950 (or maybe it was 1970?) to a 2120 on my second time around. Definitely worth the few hours and $100 bucks or whatever to bump it by 10%.
But seriously. Stop stressing out. Figure out what you can cut out, and then cut it out.
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I had a similar stressful time, in college. What really worked for me back then was saying "no" once in a while. Part of feeling "a failure" is in the fact that there is always more to do, things you missed, etc. Once you take the liberty to say no to yet another plan, you create time to finish things up to your own standards. In my case that gave me great peace of mind.
Just my 2 cts. I never really took part in the rat race
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Thinking about what could've been will drive you crazy little bro.. Try to focus on things you still have control over like the present and future...
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You're contradicting yourself in our own post. You say you have success, but you're a failure because you can't get into a good school, play soccer in the school you wanted, theatre, etc... My guess is you're saying you succeeded when measured by the lay peasant metric but failed against your own high standards.
So in essence, to put it quite bluntly, you feel like a failure because you think you failed. This might sound like a facetious statement...but it's not. It's actually pretty simple. The only way to fix this problem is to change your perspective. Regardless of how amazing a person may be, there will always be something he can focus upon to make himself think he's an utter piece of garbage. If Superman had such a shitty mentality he'd think he's a failure since he gets pwned by a green rock.
It's all about perspective. It'll change with each experience, and hopefully for better than for worse. It really depends on you.
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In highschool and already stressed out...
Stop caring about good colleges. Figure out what you care about yourself, and focus on that.
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On May 04 2013 14:01 ZeromuS wrote:
You are simply realising that you want to master something but can't master everything at once.
Instead of telling you what to do specifically, I think you should look up the stages of mastery. Read through it and realize everyone goes through similar feeling, and try to figure out what to do.
I second this.
Then I say you should also sleep more: feeling of failure is often related to depressive mindset but most of the time this can be easily handle by more sleep.
Fatigue is an all-killing machine. Since you're doing so many things maybe you lack some sleep AND some rest overall.
Taking some rest and perspective will probably increase your sense of success or lower by a lot your sense of failure.
Now you need to find something to focus on. A passion
It could explain why you feel you're failing.
You may be doing tons of things and you suppose it should be satisfying. But if you feel you failed, then it means you did not live up to any expectations. Meaning then your expectation does not lie on these activities but maybe on another one, the passion you're missing and you should focus on.
Passion is a fucking huge driver to everything imho. If you checks around, people with passion often outrank and outclass people without one. That's because their passion probably helps by emptying their mind when focusing on their passion
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Thank you for all of the advice guys.
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You live in the american culture (i grew up there too), where 'more' is better.. Everything is about competition and becoming #1 (i.e. better than everyone else). There's upsides to this american way of thinking, but there are also serious downsides; enormous pressure and stress being one of them. Life is really short and you gotta have a balance between being serious/hard-working and being completely relaxed/not giving a fuck. Going to a good university is important, but it's not like "ok, i'm not going to get into a top university so i'm not gonna be happy and successful in life"..in fact, you could end up being more happy and successful after going to a low-end university..you never know. You shouldn't regret not spending an extra hour on soccer or whatever.. have a more relaxed attitude on life or you won't enjoy it!
TLDR: Be serious and work hard, but don't take everything TOO seriously. Have no regrets.
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Just do what you are passionate about, dont do the stuff you do because of other reasons.
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EPT
