When my advisor said there is an adjustment period after the first few weeks, I kind of disregarded her message. It’s only now in hindsight I realized how true her words actually are.
I’m into my first month of freshman year of college, and thinks nowadays have taken a slight downturn. Of course, I had a few mishaps beforehand, misplaced keys and the like, but it really has just started for me.
I’m just now getting the bulk of my grades back, and to say it’s a shock is an understatement. I like to think of myself as a realistic person, and I knew beforehand not to expect the grades I got back in high school. I didn’t really have to try at all there, getting A’s quite easily, taking to the lessons like a duck to water. And even though I’m essentially taking review classes for the first semester, it’s definitely a different ball game here. Everything is similar but different, confusing the ever-loving hell out of me. And to say it’s really affecting me is putting it lightly.
Personally, I feel the biggest affront to my ego is my Computer Science class. Going in, I knew I was nowhere close in abilities as my peers; I’m a casual programmer who worked mostly in front-end development. It’s not like I don’t know how to program, or that I don’t enjoy it, it’s just I’ve always had something else to do; which is probably why Racket really threw me off as much as it did. Each time I turn in something, I keep worrying I’ll have to change my major. And again, it’s not like I’m clueless, it’s just the little mistakes accumulate into something disastrous, screwing me over in the process.
Plus, Impostor Syndrome is such a big problem here for me. I like to pride myself that the company I keep is amazing: all of my closest friends are brilliant people, and I’ve been known to sing their praises any chance I get. And contrary to popular belief, I'm not that big of an idiot. But sometimes, I could never help but to compare myself and feel inadequate. I knew going into this I would probably be in the bottom-middle in terms of intelligence, because you don’t come here expecting to be at the top of the heap. But it’s even worse than I thought, these are people coming from the Top Tens of classes of a much larger size than my graduating class of 215. And these people deserve the rankings that they have, everyone already coming with vast knowledge. But because of this, it seems that they have loads of more experience than I have, and some of the conversations fly straight over my head, making me feel small, in a way. And then that little voice each and every person has in their head goes off, “Maybe you should transfer,” “You’re going to fail,” but most of all “You don’t belong here.”
This I know would throw anybody off, but luckily I’ve had years of experience with anxieties like this. I’m a firm believer in the “fake it ‘till you make it” approach, and I’ve been using it for as long as I can remember. As long as I try harder, and developer a thicker skin than I have already I should get through this. But until then I’ll hold my breath and make “C’s get degrees” jokes until I’m blue in the face. I wanted challenging, and I got what I asked.
