Lingering Angst

As I sit here procrastinating my homework (what's new?) I have been poring over the accreditation report for UCU, the college at which I'm studying abroad this semester. Don't ask me why this sounded more interesting than the Dutch constitution. I think I was really looking on UCU's website for their scheduled holidays and just got distracted.

But I digress.

Part of the accreditation report outlined the excellence of UCU's study abroad program, especially because it selected exchange students from the honors programs of their respective universities. Now, I am not a grade monger, but admittedly it depresses me a little bit that I am not actually an honors student. I don't feel like sharing my GPA on the Internet but let's just say it isn't the 3.95 required of students on the Dean's List at UC Berkeley.

It was not my goal in life to be an honors student at a notably difficult university in an equally notably difficult department (which is arguably difficult, really, but that's just because rhetoric is so subjective), but I still find myself staring longingly and cyclically at the list, the requirements, and my grades.

I feel close enough to think there's a chance, but I realize that I secretly want to do even less work and just be smarter about it. Read: be smarter. I have long dreamed of being the encyclopedic kid who gets an elusive A+ just for showing up and exuding brilliance; one of those kids you just know can say something really smart about a book without having read it casually more than once five years ago. They don't work very hard because academia isn't a chore, because money isn't an issue, and because they have jobs or trust funds or law school waiting for them after they grow weary of undergraduate life.

I'm getting closer: my grades improve every semester and, though this post might presume otherwise, I seem to be caring less about the grades than I care about my engagement with the professors and the texts we read. For traditionalist and obvious reasons I use the grades to gauge my success in those engagements, but I find myself procrastinating more because I'm completing the work in less time.

But enough procrastinating and complaining and wishing and hoping. I'm learning to take things one step at a time. First: obtain hot Chocomel and return dinner dish to kitchen. Second: read. Do lots and lots of reading.