Failure

January 23rd, 2020

Dear Diary,

Have you ever felt like a failure before you even begin the task? Well, that's how I feel today.

I'm graduating in three months and I have no job prospects to show for it. I have always been a procrastinator, and will probably never learn my lesson. Even though I still have three months to figure it out, I know that I will walk across that stage at graduation with nothing lined up. This brings me back to the last time I really felt down on myself about my future.

After I graduated high-school in 2013, I attended a community college. I was the first person in my immediate family that had gone to college (both my parents didn't) and was never told what was going to be expected of me while I was there. I remember being in a history class my very first semester and one day my professor walked in and said, "please hand in your papers before we get started." I said to myself, "what paper?" My teachers practically held my hand in grade school and when I got to college I was on my own. I whispered to a student next to me, asking how they found out about the paper and they said, "It was on the syllabus". Oh, you mean the syllabus that I shoved deep down in my backpack after the first day of class and haven't looked at it since? I felt like a complete failure.

And I did fail the class, and then a couple more after that, so I dropped out. I started serving and bar-tending to make ends meet while trying to look for an office job with benefits. My parents supported me in every way they could, but after two years they buckled down and told me I either needed to find a full-time job, or go back to school. So I went back to school.

Now, four years later I'm finally going to graduate from college. It's crazy to think about, because I never imagined myself ever getting a bachelor's degree. I used to think that they were only for smart people, and that they were way too hard for me to obtain. It took a few years that I also am one of those "smart people" and that everyone has the potential to achieve their degree if they work hard enough.

So why am I still feeling this way? Am I scared to enter the real world? Probably. Am I having a quarter-life crisis (I am turning twenty-five this year *shudders*)? Yeah, I probably am.

I'll let you know how it pans out.

Rachel