I realized that today might be the third last time I set foot on University of Waterloo campus. The second last being the time I help Zena move out and the last being Zena’s convocation, if she so chooses to attend.
UWaterloo. For me, it might possibly have been 5 of the worst years of my life. Well, it started out good…school was good, friends were good….but after 2 or 3 terms, it just went to hell.
If Waterloo were a test, a test on independence, a test on studiousness, a test on the ability to prioritize, a test on intelligence, and a test on determination, I’ll have considered it a failure.
They tell you that highschool does not prepare you for university. They are correct. Highschool was dirt easy in comparison, I could get 85-95 with minimal effort. And better if I tried…which I rarely did. The only thing I learned from highschool was how to be cocky. How to be arrogant. How to underestimate everything and everyone (or maybe, how to overestimate myself). In highschool, one of my quotes was “The only thing I don’t know how to do, is fail”. How arrogant of me. But university is not highschool. Oh, how those lessons I’d learned backfired on me in Waterloo.
If Waterloo were a test and 50% were a pass, I’d have gotten 50%. Not 50.1%, 50%. I graduated, yes. But I literally might not have graduated if my marks were slightly lower. It was personally shameful. Given my past, my potential…I should have been above average. I’d never not been above average. A couple years in and I started to feel defeated. I’d never known this type of defeat, I didn’t handle it well. Like a downward spiral, I just fell, lower and lower. School didn’t really matter to me anymore. I just wanted everything to end.
Eventually, it did. I’ll confess something here, my post:
A recurring nightmare is basically a dream of not graduating. I was not kidding about that 50% thing above, the difference was as small as a needle point. It was stressful as hell, and clearly it was traumatically stressful. And while I did graduate, I personally let myself down.
The most difficult thing to live with after these 5 years was my shattered confidence. I think one of the reasons I’ve got two minds about everything is that I have one side telling me what I should do, and the other insecure side, giving me doubts on why I can’t do something. Like the spirit of Warren from ages 1-20 is fighting with the spirit Warren of 21-27 (and by spirit, I don’t mean an ethereal manifestation, I mean a mood of determination and will). I’m well aware of this confidence problem, it might be the reason why my social anxiety disorder symptoms are so much stronger now than they were 5 years ago. I’m very hard on myself, despite generally doing above average on everything I do (I think). The insecure Warren feels like it’s never enough. I hate getting praise because I don’t know how to respond to it….but…I need it. I crave it. I need people to blow smoke up my ass because even if it’s insincere (or sincere), it feels good. Like it helps redeem me. I have a self-deprecating attitude and I use self-deprecating humor. And consciously so, so that people blow smoke up my ass. It’s not a good quality to have…but pobody’s nerfect.
Waterloo fucked me up big time. With Zena graduating soon, my trips there should be less frequent, if ever. I’ll be happy to never visit that god awful place again. I need to put that place behind me…
