The Worst Feelings Ever, According to People’s Experiences

Credit: freepik

Underestimation and Overcoming

I’d always been a good student and ended up doing my undergrad at a competitive, top-ten university. However, I was all too aware at the time that I came from a relatively easygoing public high school, especially when compared to some of the crazy private secondary schools that had held many of my fellow students to a much higher standard. I went into my undergrad feeling like I had to work extra hard to come up to speed, and to some extent I was right.

I felt crazy underprepared for first-year chemistry, in particular. Studied my butt off for the first exam and left the test feeling a bit unsure of my performance but somehow confident that I did at least okay. We got our results back a week later as we were leaving the lecture, and at the top of my sheet, it said 54%. I had gotten the worst test result ever from my very first college exam. The nausea I felt was crippling. I’ve seen a lot of crap over the years, so this was by no means the worst thing I’ve ever gone through, but there was something this did to me that ripped from me any sense of intellectual validation that made the worst feeling I’ve ever felt. It was like everything I had ever proudly achieved, my entire self-worth was based on life in easy mode and that I didn’t deserve to be up there with all these real smart kids. I was shattered.

And the next lecture, they shared class metrics on the exam. Turns out the average was 48%, and due to the abysmal performance of everybody, and the massive influx of emails the professor received, they retroactively graded everybody to a curve. That was subsequently the biggest feeling of relief I’ve ever had.

It was the professor’s first year teaching this class.

Funny, though, how none of that had any bearing on my future.