Wavering in my "They Don't Matter Stance!"

So the University of Denver emailed me yesterday. They decided to up my scholarship money to 20,000$ a year. It was at 15,000$ before. I called last week and asked them for more money. I didn't have much of a reason to, I just wanted to pay less for law school. I thought it wouldn't hurt--it's not like they would take the previously offered money away. So they told me they would get back to me and I got that email yesterday. I am very grateful for it. I was rather excited.

You would think that this would further my opinion that my grades don't matter anymore. I have been accepted, I assume (hopefully) that I will graduate, and you only have to pass your classes to graduate. I have been saying all semester that I was attending school for fun this semester (for the first time) and not just for grades. I also declared that I didn't care what grades I received. I think I was partly right/partly wrong.

You see, I am taking Spanish 205 this semester. I took Spanish 102 two years ago. I had a hard semester and received a B in Spanish 102. Then BYU's Spanish Department decided to change the program and make 101 and 102 for people who had no Spanish in high school and made 105 and 106 the equivalent for people who had had lots of Spanish before going to college. So I would have then went to Spanish 201 and then 202 and then 205 to graduate, because you need to reach Spanish 205 to fulfill the foreign language requirement. Well, having a class every day in college seems rather ridiculous. Especially when the rest of your schedule is set up for alternating days and you have to fit in class everyday for just one class. Not to mention also that I pretty much didn't work last year so I could study for the LSAT (good choice, judging by my scholarship) and decided that this year I was going to actually make some money to pay for my wife and two children. So fitting in a class everyday was impossible.

So I had to skip 105, 106 and jump right to 205. The jump was way too high for me. I fell way behind in the class.

Getting to my point--I took a Spanish test today and was depressed. I have never done really bad in a college class. In fact, I think over 70 of my first 95 credits were in the A range. So this semester is making me think differently. It is just depressing to get that many problems wrong on a test. Also, I failed a good amount of classes in high school and only achieved an a in one class for one semester my whole high school career. The one A was also gym class. So I was a horrible student. I am familiar with failing. But I realized I am a different person now than then--in many ways. I just don't like to fail. It has made me somewhat depressed all day. In fact, while riding in my car to school today I was thinking "dang, I am so blessed, this is exactly how I always hoped life would be." I was on cloud nine (how did that expression come about?). Then the Spurs beat the Suns, and I hate the Spurs, and then I bombed my test. I was feeling down from then on.

For some reason even when getting good grades doesn't matter, it actually does matter to me. I just don't know why. People will probably leave comments about how doing your best always is important. I don't buy that. If it really doesn't matter if you get good grades or not then it really doesn't matter. I am willing to hear the arguments though as to why it does, I just haven't heard any good ones yet. But it does matter for self-esteem, I just like to do well when I do things.

Anyway, I am learning new things every day. I think this experience will teach me that I need to do well no matter how much things matter. I admit this grudgingly, because I really don't think it does matter. But for some reason peace does not come to me when I am doing poorly.

Lessons learned.

Also, I am amazed at how quickly my happiness/peace can change. I don't feel bad very often, so when I do it really catches me off guard.