gradesgradesgrades

I got a B+ in Java Programming, ranked 90th out of 194 students.

B+ isn’t a bad grade, really. It means that I”m ahead of the curve, and at a place like Columbia (where I sometimes lose sleep over the intellect of others) it’s something that I can realistically hope for. B+  is a good job, a pat on the back, a semester well spent learning something that I’ve more or less mastered.

The problem is, I can’t help but cringe at a B+. Not only because I actually had a dream that I was ranked 70th and that the first 71 students in the class got an A, but because I worked damn hard on all those problem sets. The success I felt every time my programs compiled was greater than whatever sense of accomplishment I could get from a B+.

A B+ is a mediocre grade, and I refuse to be mediocre. I guess if you looked at my entire transcript this semester, a B+ isn’t bad in light of the fact that I took 27 credits. But the truth of the matter is, I bombed that final exam. I spent the time gossiping about things like Azia Kim and G. Michael Guy instead of going over static methods. And maybe it was poor judgment that got me this mediocrity, but maybe I was just stretched too thin.

It’s hard to realize when my limits are, mostly because I’m pretty awesome, but also because I refuse to settle for less than my best. The grades I got this semester weren’t awful, but they weren’t stellar either. I’m not sure how I’d present it to my parents, my Academic Advisor (who really told me to stop taking so many classes), myself. And how am I going to learn from this when I’m still signed up for 23 credits next semester?

illusions

So I asked my mother why she hated Big D so much. It wasn’t something out of the blue, it was actually something that came out of a conversation about the state of marriage between my parents, and how me seeing Big D behind her back while my father was away really drove her insane and stressed her out.

According to my mother, Big D was unambitious, and even if he was ambitious, his intellect would have not be sufficient to carry out any ambition.

My mother is very bad at reading people. She can hardly tell if I’m lying most of the time. But it was definitely a sad conversation for me, because ambition and intellect are things that I worry about in Bboy A all the time. Maybe I am my mother’s daughter, but in that case, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell my parents about him.

sensitive matter

Me: My grades this semester have been coming in one by one and it’s making my GPA behave like the stock market.

Him: Well, the stock market isn’t doing so well these days…

Me: Shut up. I hate you.

homecoming

I came back to Montreal last night, on another agonizingly long bus ride. I read and slept for the most of the way, but as soon as we got close enough to the city for me to recognize the highway exit, I turned off the reading light and just sat there, enjoying my return to a city that means to much to me.

It’s a strange mix of fear and love each time I come back, because Montreal holds so much history for me, somewhat painful at times. I think of Big D, I think of my insane parents, I think of the hardships of college applications and clandestine rendez-vous. Because the me coming back from New York, from Beijing, from France is never the same person as the me who left Montreal not so long ago. And it’s scary to try and figure out how this new person fits in with the old life I left behind.

I come back this semester as an insane student who took 10 classes without telling her parents, as the girlfriend of a bboy from Philly, as the ex of Big D, as the new NSOP coordinator for Columbia… I’m not sure who I was when I last left, but it was definitely someone in a different mindset.