Complicated Ordinariness and Extraordinariness

Today was probably one of the most unproductive days I have had in the recent past and that is saying a lot because my whole summer was a case study in unproductivity. But nevertheless, unproductivity is more starkly noticed when you have something to be productive about but you fail at that. I had a lot of work that I had to get done today but I did not get it done and now, I am quite obviously paying the price as I sit here, trying desperately to fight sleep (though I don’t know why I am this sleepy despite the fact that I slept a lot) and try and get something at least done. But I think that is going to fail, so I might as well just sleep after this blog post.

Which brings me to another thing that I worry about, this blog. I am afraid of how I shall maintain this blog as the semester progresses. It is just the first week, one of my professors is not even here yet so her class hasn’t started yet, and I am already drowning under the workload. I am not exactly very confident of the fact that I can do this, but I do know that I have gotten through this (if not exactly, but still a form of this) before and I have the strength within me for that. All I have to do is find it and channel it properly and pray that I become a great person as an added bonus. Sometimes I wonder if there is anything I can do to make me a great person and not generally meh. I don’t necessarily think that being ordinary or average is bad (regardless of the baggage that the terms generally come with). But I cannot help but wonder how different it would have been if I were not so, if there was something extraordinary, if you will, about me. It is not exactly a very great doubt to have because it throws my self-esteem into jeopardy almost all the time. And my self-esteem is not the greatest anyway. So you take something that was already at level -1 and send it on to level -6 or something.

That reminds me, I have still not received a reply from him and well, I don’t know how to deal with it, to be honest. I don’t want to give myself hope only for it to come crashing down, so right now, I am focussing on not thinking about these kinds of things. Because when you like someone or have a crush on someone, you do tend to become quite obsessed with them. For me, this physical distance means that I have to try and not let that obsession anywhere near me because it is pointless and shall never achieve fruition. I am just really afraid because I have never really dealt with things like this before. The one time before this, I had too much going on, too much was at stake. And well, as I had written, I moved on and maybe that’s what will happen with this one too. But right now, hope is the cheeky thing that continues to flutter here and there inside my mind and well, as pleasant as the feeling is, the after-effects is something I don’t think I want to put myself through (they do say that romance is intoxicating).

But anyway, aside from that, I have been sleeping a lot lately. I don’t even know why I sleep so much or why I feel so sleepy all the time. The last couple of days, I have not been able to sleep properly because there were too many things running on my mind. As they continue to do, even right now. There are too many thoughts that are fighting for attention, to be called to be typed out onto the screen. I am afraid of my classes, if I will be able to do good enough in them for my professors to like me and think of me as a worthy student. Does that make me ‘brown-nosed’? I don’t really know, because I would not equate wanting to be liked by professors to stupidly slaving away for them and saying a ‘yes’ to everything they say or do. I don’t think that’s how I want to be liked by them. I would much rather have them like me as a consequence of my smartness. But I am ordinary after all, so there’s that dilemma. Why is everything in life so complicated?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Sickness and Minor Confusions

I am sick today and I am already thinking about how much work I have. This semester is already proving to be much harder than my other semesters (or maybe it feels that way because I had an extremely lazy summer where I did nothing productive at all). But regardless, the fact remains that I feel like I am going to get crushed under the work I have. I have readings to do right now and I also have a meeting in another half an hour. I have to take a shower before that because I have an 8:30 class in the morning. But having this much work to do is also refreshing for a change, I just wish I was in better health to better handle my crises. But the first week is not even done yet, now is not the time to crib and cry about my workload. I just have to wait until I am past the midterm before the actual trouble starts.

Right now though, my worries are primarily about keeping up with the coursework and also to write this blog and handle my club commitments and my music. It sounds like a lot but I am hoping I have the strength to pull through without permanently damaging my grades for the rest of my time here at Ashoka. I have also been thinking about a change in my minor, I am half-way through a minor in sociology/anthropology, but I had been quite sure that I would prefer to have a minor in creative writing. But I have also been thinking that I can always do creative writing courses and well, I don’t need a course to write. Of course, it would help me develop as a writer, but constant writing and reading and editing shall also help me. Besides, the creative writing minor is a privilege that many writers have probably never had. Anyway, that is if I want to become a writer. If I don’t want to, that’s going to be a different question altogether.

I have done courses in sociology/anthropology and they are pretty good and well, they do complement an English major quite well. My TA from last semester had actually written in her comments for my final paper that she hoped I would choose sociology/anthropology up as a minor, if not a major. And well, I don’t necessarily hate it. On the contrary, I think it is very interesting, except that the faculty at Ashoka are probably not the best for the discipline in the university. But that’s alright, the faculty are still good enough and well, a lot of these courses are cross-listed with other major courses, so we might actually have other faculty professors taking the course. regardless, I am at a very confused state of mind and I am hoping this semester shall give me a better understanding of what I want. At the moment, I am as clueless as I can be.

But as some sort of consolation for myself, I do happen to like my Literature courses (and mind you, we have had only one class so far and my idea of it is not very strong). Added to that is the fact that people seem to think that I am suited to be a literature student. I am very flattered by that because I have spent all of my first year at Ashoka wondering if I am suited for it. People seem to think so, and I am extremely glad for the trust and belief. All that remains to happen is me taking on to that same belief. But it is quite hard, especially with exceptionally brilliant people in the class. But I am hoping that their presence would only make me a better student rather than push me down the road to hating myself due to comparisons. Now I have a meeting to run to, so I shall have to run to take a shower and get there. I shall be able to navigate this semester, won’t I?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Imposter Achievements

Today, I dropped my phone in water, but I took it out really quick and I managed to wipe it, dry it off, and did everything I could to the best of my ability. But I am still very worried, terrified even, of what could happen to it. It seems dry, and it is working normally, but I am extremely terrified whether it would just go kaput one day. My mother told me to not charge it for a day, switch it off and allow it to properly dry off. Which is what I am doing right now, I have kept it aside, after wiping it one more time. I wiped through the holes, the earphone port, the charging port, the speaker holes, all the places through which water could have gone in. There is no water there, at least on the outside. And I am hoping and praying that it will turn out to be fine.

My dad is annoying me by telling me that this is the end, that my phone is a lost cause. But, it is working, I was able to restart it a couple of times. The microphone was working, the speaker too. The camera never got in the water, so that was safe. When I put it in the charger, which I removed after a couple of minutes when I realised what a dumb idea it was, it was charging too. At least right now, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with it. But I don’t want to talk about it for it to go kaput on me. I do have this bad luck with jinxes, I end up jinxing myself all the time. I count my chickens too early, or so my father says. I think it is the opposite, I don’t even count valid chickens sometimes. But anyway, my course at King’s starts next week, and I am highly dependent on my devices.

Which brings me to the main part of my post for today (I mean, that was a huge part too, but this is more recent). I was able to login to my King’s account and I found that my course material, timetable, syllabus, everything was uploaded. Naturally, I spent quite a long time perusing it carefully and thoroughly. I made folders for my readings and started the meticulous process of downloading the things and sorting them into the multiple folders I created. But me being me, I also spent quite a bit of my time reading about the instructor, reading about the course structure, the assessment procedures, etc. In retrospect, I should have known better and not done all that, because I was only left even more intimidated and terrified. A constant nagging thought at the back of my head, what if I am not good enough for this? What if this is all a mistake? What if I end up a major disappointment, a blotch on my own university’s name? No matter what I think to try to convince myself, I come back to this terrifying thought.

A couple or so years back, I was introduced to this concept called the ‘Imposter Syndrome.’ One of my friends, obviously exasperated with me and my overall scaredy-catness, sent me this article on the imposter syndrome and how common it was. She was like, this describes you so much, I just had to share it with you. Naturally, I looked up more about this imposter syndrome, and I was very fascinated by it. I could really relate to it, I have always felt like some lucky outsider, in my own life. When I topped my school in the class twelfth board exams, I could not believe it at all. I hadn’t really studied that hard, I hadn’t ‘prepared’ as well as many other friends of mine. Moreover, my score was below the average ‘topper-score’ (the scores of school toppers through the years). I hadn’t even been aiming for a good score, I just wanted to have decent marks so that I could walk around with my head held high (which is a problematic concept, I now realise).

The thing was, I was going to choose my university, a private university, to study god-knows-what. Many people had commented to my parents on how useless it could be, and there was also a bit of hinting that only kids who weren’t meritorious enough, who had no seat in the ‘good’, prestigious, government colleges, who would go to these private universities. For me, I wanted to do well in these traditionally set parameters, and then proudly ‘choose’ Ashoka. To say, I was offered a place there, in that university you speak so highly of, but I turned it down because I wanted to and because I could. While that was not such a huge aim, that was constantly on the back of my mind. But somehow, I didn’t actively work towards it. I told myself that I had gotten admission into the college of my choice, I was fine, I just had to do decently enough, and don’t have to prove anything to anyone for my decisions.

But turns out, unconsciously, I ended up achieving exactly what I had wanted. I got a great all-India rank in an exam that basically gave me admission into a very prestigious college (for a course that was pretty much ignored, but still, there were a total of 46 seats only for which nearly 3000 people competed). The course was not what the college was typically famous for, but the institution tag was a big deal. I think, again, in the back of my mind, I didn’t want people to say, oh, she did not get IIT Madras, and that’s why she chose Ashoka. No, I chose Ashoka despite getting into IIT Madras, and quite a few other places too. But why am I even saying all this right now, when at the moment, my fears are all concentrated on my summer course at King’s. This will, I believe, be my biggest challenge yet. To overcome my fear of failure, to overcome the feeling of being alien in my own life. Also, I hope my phone turns out okay. But I guess, sometimes, the things that run in the back of your mind have a weird way of becoming reality, don’t they?

And that’s my memory for the day.