commence with the whining

[healingmirth]

We find ourselves at the point of the semester where I would really, sincerely, like to drop out of school.

I figure, at some point as people mature/age/whatever, you get to a point where failure, or at least poor performance stops being about "not living up to your potential". It's entirely possible that I shot past this point years ago. I don't lack ambition, at least I don't think I do, but I lack drive, and organization and work ethic. Perhaps I should say that I don't lack goals; ambition may be precisely what I lack.

I am never, even if I live to be 200 years old, going to be as successful as my father by any common metric. Part of that is that I'm sincerely not interested in the types of jobs that people envy, but part of it is that I don't think I entirely understand what it takes to work hard at something and do well, the way he does. Case in point: in about 16 hours, I am going to be a huge disappointment to the people in my group when they see what I've cobbled together for my portion of the project. I've done basically everything that needed to be done for me to complete my part to expectations. I've learned everything I needed to have learned, and have a boatload of references from the boatload of research I did, but I am not even remotely interested in putting it to paper to turn in. I could manage to write something chock-full of conjecture, generalizations, and unattributed references, which is to say I could present it on a level to be useful or interesting to laypeople, but there is no way that it's going to be a completely cited piece of graduate-level writing.

Part of that is that our project, which was supposed to have a real world use, has already been made redundant, but part of it is that I'm just not interested in proving my skill, talent, or intelligence to The System. I haven't been since middle school, and this is the recurring theme in why I am a horrible student. This is also the reason that I would have made a horrible scientist, although perhaps not a horrible teacher. Once I have figured it out, I don't have the faintest interest in writing it down. I'm marginally more interested in discussing it with people, though, and finding the common language between my thought process and theirs that makes it intelligible. This is an interest which is notsomuch useful as a student.

Yeah, the other reason that I am a horrible student is that I do stuff like this rather than productive work when I am 16 hours (12, if you count the time that I will be in class) away from a massive deadline.