You say that you want to spend less together, that you need the space – and no, not the space to be yourself, to be with others – to be with books. Books. I’m replaced by sleepless nights of poring over Economics notes, by workout sessions with the bboys, by the fact that you’d much rather get a A than lie in bed on lazy Sunday morning, tracing the beauty marks on our bodies.

No, it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me like it doesn’t bother me that I’m less significant than a perfect problem set, that I’m less cool than a successful windmill followed by a sick 90, that a wild weekend in NYC pales in comparison to a studious weekend in Philly.

I’m a passive aggressive bitch, but I’m tired of my own mind games. Big D always said to never ask questions to which you didn’t want to know the answer. Somehow, I still love to play the games in which you always come out on top.

So what’re you up tonight? Going to bed early?

At some point, you will notice that I have willed myself to stop caring. By then, it’ll probably be too late. We’d already be far too gone.

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?