Electrical Engineering Is Kicking My Ass - 5/11/2007 in 2005 - 2007: High School

Sometimes I do not like myself. Most of the time, as I have mentioned, I am in love with myself. I am not trying to deny this. I am just saying that once in a while I do shitty things and realize that they are shitty. Sometimes I am a failure.

I had another fight with Rogers yesterday. Bonnie was taking an AP test, and I had nothing to work on, really, in the way of my final project, so I took out my English homework. He came over and told me to stop. But not directly. He like, asked me what I was reading and if it was good and stuff, trying to embarrass me into apologizing. This made me a little angry. Come on Rogers. It is totally valid for you to yell at me for reading in your class. But I am eighteen years old and we have known each other for three years and it is not necessary for you to play games with me. I will put the goddamn book away.

So then I figured that while he was there I would tell him that I did print out this one circuit diagram, and ask him a question about it since, like all circuit diagrams, I did not understand it.

I literally could not make sense of anything he said. He kept using terms that I did not know. I thought that maybe he just wasn't answering my question, so I kept repeating my question, like, "Well yes but... Where is that in the equation, exactly?" And then he would repeat whatever it was that he was saying, which definately did not sound to me like an answer to the question "where is that in the equation, exactly?" This went on for maybe twenty minutes. It ended like this:

"...I'm sorry. I just don't understand."

"Well Aidan, I don't know what to tell you. I don't understand what about this you don't understand. And now you've wasted half the class, and if you would have just looked back in your notes you probably could have figured it out. If you had done the labs..."

"I did do the labs. I didn't understand them while I was doing them. I haven't understood anything in this class since diodes. So I don't think that going back in my notes is going to help me."

"Well reading an English book is definately not going to help you. I mean, for most of the semester you've been saying 'I don't know I don't know,' and you don't actually try to figure it out. I know that you're a senior and that there's a lot going on and everything, but you have to at least make an effort to learn things before you say that you don't understand them."

"...It's not... That I don't try..." I did not finish this thought. I was starting to cry, so I left. Like, I didn't just leave the lab. I left the lab, and then I left the building, and then I walked into the woods, and then I came out on the other side of the woods, and then I sat down next to a pond, and cried, and when bugs flew around my head stood up and flailed and exclaimed nonsensical things like "Shhh!"

I thought about how I am probably going to fail electrical engineering, and how it is completely my fault. It does not seem like it should be my fault. But it never really seems like anything is my fault. I mean, I didn't decide not to learn anything about electronics. It just happened. I just failed to learn anything about electronics. And I guess it happened because of things I did and ways that I am, but it's not like I could have done anything about it. It doesn't seem like it.

Here are my excuses: 1. Rogers does not really explain anything to us, and what he does explain he explains badly, and I like having things explained to me. I am not good at "play with this for a while and figure out what it does," which is what the entire class is. 2. Bonnie does not really do group work. I knew that if I wasn't careful, she was just going to do the labs herself and leave me behind, and I wasn't, and she did. 3. I am not an engineer. I do not have that mindset. I do not care how you use things if I do not know why they work. Why things work is really not what the class is about.

But then I thought about how really Rogers is right and that I should just suck it up and figure it out. And then I thought about how I never want to accept responsibility for anything, and how The New Ann thinks that I am a big baby, and how I was basically just being more of a big baby by getting upset and leaving, and how it really sucks that Rogers and I used to respect each other and now we clearly don't, and how I have ruined that. Then I said to myself, "Dude, just pull yourself the fuck together. That is really the only solution to this problem. Just suck it up and go back to class." But I failed to do that too. No matter how hard I tried, I could not pull myself the fuck together and go back to class. When I yelled at myself for this, I said, "I can't help it! I can't help it!"

While I was at it, I thought about how I have no friends. And how I can't help that either. Except that I can help it. I could have helped it. I was directly responsible for everything that happened. But it doesn't seem like it. It seems like it just happened.

This is exactly what failure is. I hate it.

"I cannot wait to get out of here. After I leave, I am never looking back." I said this out loud.

It's not true. But I have realized, finally, that in a few years I will not care about high school that much, the same way I don't care about middle school that much now, even though I thought I would when I was in middle school. I have realized that visiting Mr. Sampson and seeing the band on Thanksgiving and stuff will not be as much fun as I thought. I will probably not even do them after freshman year, because I won't care. It won't be my world anymore.

It's sort of already not my world anymore.

I think I went back inside when a jogger jogged by me. I think that's what made me go back inside. The block had already ended. I washed my face in the bathroom and then went into the physics lab to pick up my stuff.

"Aidan, I'm sorry you got upset..." said Rogers.

"No. I'm sorry I left," I said, and left.

In calculus we went to the computer lab specifically to watch youtube videos.

At work, Lyra asked me what was wrong.

"Eh,"

"Is school kicking your ass?"

"Yes. Yes, school is definately kicking my ass."

"How many days left?"

"Eleven."

"You can do it. You can do eleven days."

"Okay."

"You know, I don't think I've ever really heard you swear. Swear."

"Fuck," I said.

She burst out laughing.

Okay. Okay. I have a final project in every subject except band, but it will get done. I have made a schedule of things to do every day, so that I can still go to college. I wrote at the top of the schedule, "This is reasonable. Do it or you're not going to college."

I will start today's assignments right after I make some rice krispy squares and eat them.