My Life Needs a Report Card

In school, I always knew where I stood. I understood the rules, I understood the grading system, and I knew that good grades meant I was on the right track. If a class was too hard, I knew that I could struggle through, and move on once the semester was over. Then I knew to avoid that type of class, or at least that professor, for the remainder of my school days. For me, it was philosophy courses – my brain wasn’t wired that way. I worked my way through a semester trying to decipher the readings and writing the best essays I could about caves and lights and all that, knowing that once I got to the end of the semester, I could move on.

My problem, I’m finding, is that life doesn’t hand out systematic report cards. Sometimes I find myself struggling with a situation, and trying to find the best answer to it, but I don’t have much to guide me. If I knew I was getting a C+ at this area of life, I might try to find a better solution. Without a quarterly report card, it’s sometimes hard for me to see a situation clearly, to understand what the issues are and to better decide if I should try to find a different class, or a different professor, of if I need to change my major entirely. As much as I may love Einstein, it doesn’t mean I’m cut out to be a physics major, you know?

I’m sure this seems pretty transparent, but in reality I just had a rough afternoon. Today made me miss the confident Student Me who knew how the system worked, and figured if college was that straightforward, surely grown-up adult life would be a breeze. I guess I need to look at days like this as my Adult Report Card, and take stock of the grades that life seems to be handing me. No one wants to live a C+ life. Or, at least, I don’t.