The World Three

October 3, 2008

And so the previous semester ended with a big and shiny tres (read: 3.0!) on my CRS account, punctuating what should have been a perfect collection of 1.0's, 1.25's ,and 1.5's of my graduate career in chemistry. The first tres ever to grace my record. Finally, I realize why I kept thinking of myself as Harry Potter when I was younger - I have the knack of always ending up alive. Although it makes me really nervous because I know sooner or later all that luck's gonna run dry.

Honestly, with the fiasco I've made of my academic life last semester, I should be really really thankful I managed to scrape a 3.0! I'm not tying to be heroic and all but (for witnesses ask my roomies) with the effort I exerted, I deserved to fail. Like I did not submit more than half of the required problem sets, getting a 19% score in an exam, maximizing the number of allowed absences, cutting classes just because I feel lazy, sleeping until an hour before the exam when I haven't studied a thing! Come on! And yet here I am again, managing to hang on to another sem of becoming a wannabe PhD.

It is actually a bit of a scandal, really, in the Institute. Because graduate students getting a 3.0, although not unheard of, are extremely rare and that is unsurprising given the type of personalities most chemistry graduate students have. In fact, when I told some of my coleagues about the grade I got, they told me it was okay yet they looked at me sideways as if I have a highly contagious and dangerous disease (supposing they are not referring to my HIV). What's more, I think most of the senior faculty already now about it, given that it was from one of them (not my teacher) who told me in the first place that I should recalculate my GWA because I got that three. And this afternoon, when I told other PhD's about my request that I wanted to take only one graduate subject this sem because I did not want to repeat what I did "last sem", they understood without need for further elaborations. Am I famous or what?

Or maybe I should have used "infamous"?

It is only know that the severity of my delinquence last sem is sinking in. Geez, Bryan, you could have destroyed your career. You could have been kicked out. Just a grade lower and you'll have a very different life from then on... You will have to find a different career. Goodbye to teaching. Goodbye to chem!

3.0 is actually already a failing mark in graduate standards. The 2.0 is the MS/PhD students's 3.0. And I got that! I got a pseudo-failing mark!

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY MR. BRYAN CHRISTIAN N. DE LA ISLA IS RECEIVING SUCH MARKS! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGHHHH! IT'S A SIGN THAT THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR!

Ha! Who am I kidding? To be blunt about it, instead of feeling grateful I was dismayed with my grade there. At the back of my mind, I always knew I would pass but I never dreamed of getting the bottom passing mark. It takes a while to get used to, especially since I am not used to my colleagues treating me as if I am made of lower caliber. I just can't take it! I will not tolerate it!

Always I've prided myself of not caring yet still managing to get good marks, but now I should change that to not caring yet still managing to pass. TO BARELY PASS. To pass, just to pass, is not COOL! It's ORDINARY! I do not want to be ordinary!

Hahaha...

But you know reader, despite all these flashy exaggerated reactions, there's one really good thing coming out of this - I may have pseudo-failed but... I learned a lot!

FROM NOW ON, I WILL LEARN TO APPRECIATE GETTING A GOOD GRADE.

FROM NOW ON, I WILL REMEMBER THAT IF I WANT TO GET A HIGH MARK, I SHOULD EXERT SOME EFFORT INTO IT.

FROM NOW ON, I WILL REMEMBER THE PRICE I HAVE TO PAY IF I FAIL.

And more importantly,

I LEARNED HOW IT FEELS.

(And the experience I received will get me a long way, farther than those who never knew how it was to almost fail, farther than how I'd be not knowing how it is to get a three...)

***

"To walk within the lines would make my life so boring,
I want to know that I have been to the extremes."
-from Avril Lavigne's "Anything But Ordinary"