Permission to Fail

I am a quitter.

There has never ever been a girl who has been harder on herself than I have always been. I have always compared myself to the masses, wondering why my grades weren’t higher, why I wasn’t getting promoted as fast as someone else, wishing I felt like more of a success even while others probably view me as successful. For my entire life, I have worried too much about what everyone else thinks of me, putting such intense pressure on myself to be better than I am, almost paralyzed by self-doubt and self-consciousness. The worry and panic that I feel when I come face-to-face with my own limitations is enough to back me into a corner.

A few weeks ago, I was so excited about the beginning of a new semester of college. I barely made it through the four fall classes that I was taking, and likewise for the summer prior. But I was determined to finish. Seeing my daughter working through her first year of college made me want to get back in the game, finish what I started years and years ago. I had fantasies in my mind of transferring to the same four-year school, graduating at the same time as her. Wouldn’t that be fun? In actuality though, I don’t even think that I would want to do that. Why would I want to take away any of her shine? At the end of the day, I just want that piece of paper showing that I was smart enough to finish the program.

I have always been wildly embarrassed by the fact that I never went away to college. I went to community college right after high school and did really well. I was too intimidated by a big university to apply anywhere. I was worried about how my family would pay for it, and I didn’t want to put the burden on my parents. Looking back, I had so many options that I just wasn’t well versed enough in to explore. I was overwhelmed by the process of applying to schools, so I just never started. Community college was the less terrifying choice. I did well for awhile, but then I got caught up in work, succumbing to the job that turned into the career that I spent 20+ years hating because I was good at it and because it paid well. I tried to go back to school a few times over the years, sometimes nailing a class and earning the credit. Other times, I dropped them midway through the semester because it was just too much to work and be a mom and care about World History.

Some things never change, I guess. I began with the best of intentions a few weeks ago. I bought new notebooks and a new planner. I listed every assignment that was due from January until May in my pretty multi-colored felt tip pens. My organizational skills were going to be top-notch. I read the first couple of chapters before classes even began, determined to get ahead so that I wasn’t stressed. I had A’s on every assignment. I knew that I could do it.

Sigh. I made it two weeks before I was in over my head.

The past few days have just been too much. I have been up late trying to complete journals and ledgers that make no sense for accounting, attempting to calculate inflation rates and consumer price indexes for macroeconomics, and explaining why line graphs reflect over the y-axis according to certain equations for precalculus. There was also an entrepreneurship class that I am only taking because it’s required, not because I have any desire to be an entrepreneur. My head hurts just thinking about all of it. I haven’t been sleeping well because of the stress. I don’t have time for hobbies or Netflix or wine after work.

I question why I am doing any of this. Deep down, I know why. I don’t want my girls to be disappointed in me. I don’t want to be disappointed in myself. I don’t want to be embarrassed when my new coworkers ask me where I went to school and I have to tell them that I dropped out (again and again). I wonder if I am missing a degree so much as I feel like I am missing the experience of going away to school. I am a 41 year old grown-assed adult who wishes she had been able to do that at least once. Taking classes online just isn’t the same. I don’t even know that the degree is worth the paper it is printed on. I have been so disappointed in the amount of information that I am actually retaining from any of my classes. Some of the instructors are fantastic, putting just as much effort into teaching an online group as they would in-person, and others are barely present at all. I cannot learn from a computer program. Isn’t the point of college to gain higher education? If I’m not learning anything, what am I even doing?

Tonight, I came home from work and made dinner, then immediately jumped into accounting homework. I spent all night on it, not understanding a single thing that I was doing. I reviewed my notes, went over the textbook, over and over and over. Then I cried, texted my bestie and my brother, and then sent drop forms to each one of my instructors. I am hoping that I feel more free when I wake up tomorrow. I don’t want to spend my free time doing this anymore. I am miserable, and it isn’t worth it. I finally have a job that I really truly enjoy, where I have fun and make a good living, and they don’t care if I graduated from college or not. I have to give myself permission to fail and move forward. No one even cares about this except me.

Now, I have to figure out how to white out all of the assignments that I wrote in my 2022 planner. All of that pretty colored ink is now cluttering up my pages.