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Originally Posted by Alex's Trip
You don't know that everything is going to be okay...That is something that I can never make myself believe. I'm not getting these grades for my parents, I'm trying to ensure that I have a good future, but I don't think anything that I do will make me totally sure that everything is going to be okay.
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i COMPLETELY understand that sentiment . . . it's kind of unfortunate that it's happening to you so early, as it didn't start with me until college. i got a 1460 SAT, my undergraduate GPA is 3.80 (if i graduated today i would graduate
summa cum laude), and, while i haven't gotten my LSAT score back yet, i feel reasonably confident that it will qualify me for mensa (mensa takes scores from tests other than IQ tests) -- yet i STILL have these constant nagging feelings that i've underachieved given my potential. questions are constantly floating through my head like, will any professor remember me well enough to nominate me to phi beta kappa? should i have tried harder to avoid the few b's i have on my record? will my LSAT score be high enough to get into the law school of my choice? have i gained enough work experience and participated in enough extracurricular activities? could i be doing more with my life generally? ordinarily i come down extraordinarily harshly on myself, and while i realize that this is neither healthy nor productive, i can't seem to reason my way out of it fully. so i feel yr. pain.
also, regarding the "reward for achievement" thing, i always got somewhere in the range of $25-30 per report card from my grandparents pretty much all thru school. i never really cared about the money -- just knowing that i had done well was good enough. but it was always a good reinforcement. i don't get quite the same reaction from my dad -- when i tell him how i've done each semester he'll not infrequently say something like, "i graduated; that was good enough for me" (he took 5 years to get thru college because he screwed around one semester so much that he barely stayed in school). there may be an element of jealousy there, and your parents might have it to some degree too, depending on their own histories; i dunno.