Failure is My Arch-nemesis, and I Have Excellent Taste in Music Unless You're Happy

You know how some people have that notorious falling dream? The one where you just keep falling until you wake up? My reoccurring dream isn't like that, but I've had one since I was a child. As I've gotten older, this dream has more often been replaced by agonizing ones of murders, but no matter the nature, the nightmares I have many times a week always leave me paranoid and shaking after I jolt awake.

In my dream, I’m driving a car, but I can’t control it. I’m pushing frantically on the pedals, turning the steering wheel, but the car is moving of its own volition and nothing I can do will stop it. I know that I can’t protect the people in the car (as a child, most often my family), and it makes me feel like a failure. I’m losing control. (At least my dreams are easy to psychoanalyze, right?)

Of all of the things in my life, I might be most afraid of failure. Perhaps, more tangibly afraid of than I am of serial killers, although that’s debatable.

FOF (I just made up an abbreviation for Fear of Failure)  might be the reason I cried every time I got in the car while learning to drive as a teenager, the reason I can’t check my voicemail to this day (running high number is 93 unread messages), and certainly the reason academic success has had historic jurisdiction over much of my life.

This is what I'm bad at.


My chronic FOF didn't develop slowly over years of pushing too hard, it’s simply innate. During my teen years, many professionals tried the somewhat Freudian approach of blaming my parents for pressuring me into perfection. This never happened. Many times, my mom watched in bewilderment as I cried over low A’s and high B’s. I cannot tell you the number of times a teacher has scrawled on a critique to be less hard on myself, or a friend has calmly told me to stop being irrational in my expectations, but somehow, I've never been able to listen. Failure does exist, it’s real, and it’s simultaneously terrifying and terrible. When I truly did face failure in something, I simply quit. I walked away. And as an adult in a society in which women supposedly aren't supposed to be highly motivated by achievements and career success, I am.

We’re obsessed with numbers in America. We’re all, whatgradedidyoumake-howmuchdoyouweigh-howoldareyou-whatisyourBAC-justwritedownyoursocial-we’llhavetodoacreditcheck. We slap Apgar scores on babies as soon as they’re born. Fast forward to college, and not only are good grades important, but positive feedback and perceived success are as well. As an undergrad, I treated every test not only as an opportunity to make a good grade, but as a race. I illogically felt obligated to finish first in the class, although second was also acceptable. Any later, and I figured I hadn't studied enough. My friend Sara and I often finished our tests within seconds of each other, and as we have the same brain and often studied together, I’m still amazed our basically identical tests never condemned us as suspected cheaters. Or our notes. We were always writing notes and still being the favorite students, because we’re fabulous. 

By far, my worst college class was Honors Statistics. I took it with Sara, who is one of the most intelligent people I know. She is also as bad at math as I am. Our class was divided into two groups: the front three rows, and the back two. The front-row students understood the material and nodded their heads happily over problems containing random numbers and symbols copied from the mysterious board of non-logic. The back two rows of lost souls, of which Sara and I made up two, spent all of the classes giving furtive, terrified, haggard looks at each other or silently weeping. We all were making D’s or F’s, and most of us were in shock at the perpetual string of scrawled on, condemning tests and homework handed back to us. 

The class that is clearest in my memory is one of our final ones, during which I received yet another accusatatingly marked test that I knew was about to destroy my GPA. In the locked classroom (meaning I couldn't enter again if I left), I began crying. This time, my tears were not silent, sad ones, however, they were big, giant, body-shaking sobs as I adopted the fetal position on my chair. Snot was everywhere. Giant, salty, soppy holes were being torn into the test. After the class, I went up to the teacher and expressed my fears and concerns for the third or fourth time. I wasn't just crying, I was SOBBING. Who wouldn't take pity on a sophomore girl crying as she watched her future slip away in a tangle of integers? This man had DAUGHTERS, for crying out loud. He was unsympathetic, and Sara and I attempted to comfort ourselves by dedicating this song to him.

I spent the final days of my statistics career wailing hysterically in the shower as I played Tori Amos’s song “Mondays” on loop. This song is about a school shooting, which I apparently felt was an appropriate choice for my song of mourning. Of course, it should be entirely clear to everyone that Tori Amos writes wonderful tragedy songs, the way Taylor Swift writes great breakup songs, Tegan and Sara articulate angst like no one else in the music industry, Lily Allen writes the loveliest enemy songs, and Regina Spektor's lyrics make me understand the world.

I fail to understand why statistics will be essential to my being a good social worker, but apparently there is a strong correlation. Despite everyone else’s concern in the matter, the only possible common factor I see between my honors statistics math class as an undergrad and my future career as a counselor is a possible abundance of Kleenex. And, in all honesty, if a client ever cries as much in a therapy session as I did over that statistics class, I will probably have to immediately send them to the nearest hospital to obtain a rehydrating IV.

This is what I looked like every time I did my statistics homework.

I recently stood before an information table at a graduate school fair, being that student everyone hates who captures the recruiter’s attention and asks about a million minutely specific questions. The Columbia recruiter was young, blonde, and perky. I’m not sure, but I think she might actually have been hired as a model to staff the table, just so Columbia could be all, not only are our students smart and rich, they’re also really pretty. I highly doubt she was actually a Social Work student, at any rate, because she responded to questions she didn't know the answer to with a vapid smile, instead of a concerned face of assurance. And in my very limited time as a social worker, I've already learned that we L-O-V-E the therapist face. She handed me brochures and flyers as she chirped away about how excellent their program was, although she didn't know, um, all of the details about their internship placement procedure. As I wrapped up my barrage of questions and blockade of the table, I asked, “What are your prerequisites?”

“Oh! We don’t have any. Well, except for one. You have to have made a B or better in a statistics class.”

“Well, what if I didn't?”

“Make a B or better?”

“Yes, what happens then? Will it affect my acceptance?”

The woman’s tone changed to one that was both bemused and condescending, her face reading, why in the world do you think you can apply to an Ivy League school if you can’t even make a B in statistics? Damn you, statistics, I knew you would haunt me and get me eventually. I could sense the recruiter’s long, manicured pink fingernails just aching to snatch those brochures back from my supposed academically incompetent hands.

This is not the only time I've been given this look. I was also given it by my department advisor in college, who did little in my presence other than twitch his mustache, and took productive action towards my future only when I was sitting at his desk and physically watching him do so. The Social Work department loved and gloated over me, as I was apparently their Most Favorite Student Ever. “What is your GPA?” he asked, scrolling through my transcript as I forced him to plan for my future, or at least supplement it with emails and letters of recommendation. “I guarantee you it’s higher than any other student’s in the department," he said, twirling his Ron-Swanson-wanna-be mustache and smiling. “Umm… a 3.8 something? Maybe a high 3.7?” He turned towards me in his rolley chair, suddenly looking more concerned than he ever had when considering the location of my final field placement. “What were those B's and C's in?” he asked, as though being bad at math was a grave disappoint not only to me, but to the entire department. “I got C's in pre-cal. And stats. They brought down my GPA”, I explained. “Oh, and I got a B in earth science, because science is stupid. And in my online classes, because…. well, just because I’m bad at online classes.”

He wished.

I wasted a lot of tears in school, because, at the end of the day (despite Columbia-barbie-girl’s opinion), statistics does not matter. It wasn't that I was stupid or inept or unmotivated, as the permanent indent of my ass in one of the math lab’s tutoring seats from that semester can attest. It was just a bad fit. And, quite suddenly the other day, I had this revelation for the first time: SOMETIMES THINGS ARE JUST A BAD FIT.

Statistics was a bad fit the way ballet sucking away my life was a bad fit, a bad fit the way waitressing was a bad fit (I once literally dropped a steak at my boss’s feet), a bad fit the way maps and me are a bad fit and puzzles are a bad fit and my current job is a bad fit.

I’m about to start crying (that was definitely just a Freudian slip for “applying”) for graduate school for the second time. These applications are so overwhelmingly obnoxious and daunting. Columbia University’s application is all like, FORGET BEING 22, YOU BETTER HAVE DONE ALL OF THE THINGS. The first time I applied, I had just faced some rather future-altering-forever decisions, and missed the deadlines. Whether dates or lack of experience or simple undesirability was the cause, rejection letter after rejection letter flowed in. I've feared a lot of failure in my life, but I never feared getting into grad school…I graduated in the top 5% of my class. I wasn't emotionally prepared for that defeat, and when the rejection letter from my top school finally came, my body shut down. I went to bed and slept for over 24 hours.

Something like this, but in a bed.

The worst part, however, was telling other people I had just plain failed and hadn't made it in. I don’t really want to have to break that news again, but if I have to, I will. I’m only applying to schools I’m really interested in going to. And if I fail at that, then I’ll develop awesome potential back-up plans.

Maybe I’ll get super brave and join the Peace Corps. Maybe I’ll get a degree in something else then go back for my PhD. Maybe I’ll get my TEFL certification and go teach English in another country for a few years. Maybe I’ll just settle into a job I like and work and volunteer and pay off my car. That’s the great thing about being young and single and not-yet-settled. I can do whatever I want.

Sometimes, things are just a bad fit. And this doesn't mean you or I or anyone else is a failure, because most of us just can’t succeed at everything. HOW DID IT TAKE ME ALMOST 23 YEARS TO LEARN THIS?!

No one fails at EVERYTHING, anyway. I’m not good at sitting at a desk and planning, but if you need someone to talk to teenagers and parents about suicide, I’m awesome. I can’t understand math to save my life, but I can write you a kick-ass essay. I’m horrible at directions, but… well, I’m not good at anything vehicle-related, but you get the idea.

So just maybe maybe believing in yourself doesn't mean believing you’ll succeed. Believing in yourself maybe means believing you’ll be okay if you don’t. Because even if I’m having to buy jeans a size up or I get school rejection letters or… I’ll be okay.

BAM.

And finally, I just realized both the best friend and Taylor Swift have been mentioned an inordinate amount of times in my blog. I’m not sure what this says about me.