I finished my final year of college with a D in a Senior Seminar English class. D’s do not get degrees, generally speaking. Final assignments were turned in, tests were done, and there were no more opportunities to save my grade. I would not be getting a diploma. After a crippling final year of college that had seen me crying, panicking, over-sleeping, under-sleeping, missing work, failing to follow through with commitments, isolating from friends, turning toward an abusive relationship, and worrying worrying worrying for every minute of every day about the work I needed to be doing but could not make myself do — I had finally arrived at the end. And it was all for nothing.
I had written my final paper for this class on the connections between the American multi-ethnic experience and the genre of science fiction. It had been a fun topic to research, involving the comparison of writing by Chang-rae Lee, N. K. Jemisin, Charles Yu and Junot Diaz. The essay almost writes itself once you understand that science fiction and American multi-ethnic identity meld beautifully at the intersections of topics like human identity, tribalism, the exploration and conquest of land, and what a future world or alternate reality could look like if things were just slightly different. As an English major who loves science fiction, there was no reason why I should not have happily immersed myself in this fantastical and meaningful research for the final assignment of my college career. And, I did not even start writing this 15-page paper until the day it was due. I came in at 12 pages and turned it in at noon the day after it was due. I had stayed up the entire night to write it. I was not proud of my work.
This had been the same story during the 4 years that I was working on my degree. Everything I turned in was late. Everything I wrote was half-researched. Nothing I did made me proud. And now it was all over.
I had longed for this day, when nothing left would be due, and nothing more would be asked of me. Every day of this last, hardest semester I had kept myself going by picturing the day I would be done, diploma in hand and my life spread out in front of me. I had envisioned the relief I would feel when it was all over. I was desperate to feel the lift from my shoulders and the peace in my heart.
In the end I was able to write to my professor and to the chair of my department, make an appeal, and get the grade to count toward my degree. But that feeling of relief that I had been visualizing all semester never came. It was all finished, but I was never released from the pressure of that entire last year of college. They had awarded me my Bachelor’s degree in English, but I knew I didn’t deserve it. I knew I had not really earned it. And to this day, I do not feel released from college. To this day, the relief has not come. Most of the time I can forget about it, or make light of it. But even now, when I sit at my computer and try to get work done, I feel the same pressure and anxiety grip the muscles in my stomach. In my tortured head, everything I do, or fail to do, will turn out to be the latest evidence of my inadequacy.
Sometimes I think that going back to school and earning a degree, really earning it, might possibly be the one thing that frees me from my self-loathing. But I do not believe I can do it. And I am terrified. If I were to try again and fail again, I’m afraid, I would never forgive myself.
Instead of going back to school, I could choose to see things differently. I could be thankful that I got a degree at all, and tell myself that it doesn’t matter how well I performed, as long as the diploma is in my hand. And this is true – I have gotten jobs and higher salaries because of my college degree. It does not really matter to employers if I wrote a good essay while in school, as long as I do a good job at work. By that measure of success, I am not a failure at all. But by my own personal measure, this degree is meaningless, because the work I did to earn it was half-assed and shameful.
And so . . . I am not released. Since graduation I have existed in a purgatory of my own design. Not a single person I know has told me that I don’t deserve my degree. But in a very real sense, that appeal letter was never accepted by my department chair. It never went through, and the D grade never counted. I do not have a Bachelor’s degree, no matter how many times I print those words on my resume. I am a fraud.
The world inside your heart is often crueler than the world you live in. Ironically, it has turned out that I am my worst abuser.
THE RABID RABBIT 