blueswede

what the fuck is wrong with me?

Regarding my last entry: it probably wasn't a really great
idea to write things at 1:00 in the morning when I'm tired
as all hell. I hope I never write anything that incoherent
ever again, unless I'm drunk.

I got my CS midterm back today, and found that I'd gotten an
83.5% on it. Most of it was just stupid shit that I missed
because I wasn't paying close enough attention. I can still
get an A if I do well on the rest of the projects, but that
is easier said than done.

The project we have now deals with Gaussian elimination, and
I haven't used matrices since 9th grade algebra. To put it
another way, I really have no fucking clue how to do most of
the math on here, let alone code it. Why they're giving us
this kind of crap, I don't know. I'll probably be able to
tackle it in some manner, but it's hard to say exactly what
degree of success I'll have with scoring points. I knew it
was a good idea to do the extra credit.

It's funny how most of what I'm learning at college is stuff
about myself. Normally I'd like that, but I'm learning less
about what I can do and more about what I can't do.

In the time that I've been here, I've learned that I really
can't sing for shit, I can't really play my guitar all that
well, I'm not smart, I'm not at all attractive to women (but
I knew that already), and I'm evidently also not likeable.
And judging by the way my room smells, I'm also not clean.

So far, I've mainly learned that I don't have these positive
qualities after all. It's really done a number on the whole
self-image thing; I find that I have greater hatred for who
I am than I ever did before.

Now I understand why MIT's suicide rate is so high: you take
a bunch of people who have their entire self-image and their
self-esteem based on relatively few traits, and then if they
somehow don't do well, if those traits fail to come through,
then suddenly you've shown everything they had to be totally
inadequate. The system is a pretty horrible beast.

So I guess that describes what's been happening to me. It
would be tolerable if it were just one or two things, say if
I did poorly on the math midterm and I didn't make it in to
the improve troupe (those both happened). But when pretty
much every positive trait I thought I had is negated by some
unpleasant event, and I still have to deal with all the shit
I've been carrying around for the last nine years, then it's
pretty damn hard to take.

The only thing I've really done fairly well at has been my
job, which may explain why I picked up four hours before my
shift on Saturday, effectively requiring me to work 2:00 to
9:00. I'm spending my whole weekend doing this shit, and I
guess maybe it's because I've been fairly good at it. Here
I was thinking the only motivation was moneylust.

So that's the situation as it stands right now. I no longer
consider myself to be a good person or a decent human being,
because that's pretty much all been proven wrong. Can't get
into the fraternity, can't get a date to save my life, can't
find people who really want to hang out with me. Perhaps I
should do some volunteer work or something, maybe attempt to
redeem myself in some way. I don't know.

There has to be some way to right this seriously fucked-up
situation, but I don't know what it is. Guess I'll have to
just spend more time studying, and quit socializing quite so
much. It sucks, but if that's what I have to do to feel ok
about who I am, then so be it.

This is Dave, signing off to seek validation.