Something that has been increasingly bothering me since the beginning of the semester here is this whole CGS concept. Granted, the requirements to get into CGS here are lower than say, CAS or SMG, but by no means does that ensue that I'm less intelligent or less driven. It pisses me off that the rest of the population here looks down at CGS students and thinks we just sit on our asses not learning anything and then claim to have a BU education. I work my ass off every single day, just as hard if not harder than everyone else here. It doesn't matter if a person applied directly into CGS or if they were placed here, the point is they're here and they're working. Never in my life have I ever been considered second rate and for the first time, I feel how other people have felt who are put down every day and honestly, I can see why teenagers have such low self esteem sometimes. Yesterday a comment was shot towards me about CGS and its students' "study habits." Something along the lines of, "they never work throughout the semester and then come exam time they freak out, stay up all night, and cram in the morning." I've never heard such bullshit in my life. You give me one college student who doesn't cram the night before the exam and I'll give you an entire university's population that do. Good thing I completely lost respect for the person who said that.
I shouldn't let it bother me as much as I do, I know what I'm capable of and I know that I'm not just put in here because I couldn't get into a better college or I'm not as smart as other students here.
I'm just sick of having to prove myself.
Unfortunately, the need to constantly prove yourself to other people is a fact, if not a necessity, of most aspects of life. I used to think that the need to prove or verify intelligence, aptitude, or any other quantifiable measure of humanity would dissipate. But the reality is that it re-emerges after each successive hurdle: college acceptance, med school acceptance, job acceptance, etc. And the need to prove or demonstrate superiority is not confined to professional life. Each time we enter into a relationship with another human being, we assess that person and are, in turn, assessed by them. This is not an evil or biased process. This is purely the way humans evaluate one another. As long as you wish to interact with others, you will be judged. So in a world so unjustly slanted in the favor of bias and iniquity, what freedom does one have left? The freedom to absorb, deflect, or consider any feedback given as a result of the evaluation. The necessity to present one's self as an ideal conception implies the opportunity to realize what the conception is and reconcile the differences between ideality and reality. Instead of feeling hopeless, betrayed, or otherwise wronged by this essential human process, use it selectively as an avenue to self improvement.
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