<p>Does anyone else feel like a loser/dumb/bad when they're anything less than perfect? My past two math tests have been a 91 and a 93 and I feel like a retard. Am I alone or does this happen to others? </p>
<p>Things that have made me feel like a loser/bad/retarded:
- 216 on PSAT when two classmates got 217 and 232
- Missing placing in a county math bowl by 1 question
- Having a terrible night in CoD
- Making a joke where no one laughs, even though I'm generally thought of as funny
- Getting lower than a 95 on any test
- Being sore because of activity xyz and not being able to lift well in the gym the next day</p>
<p>The Joke thing gets to me sometimes and, being deficient in ANY athletic activity makes me feel inferior, but as for the tests, an A is A bruh. A 99 is the same as a 90 to me.</p>
<p>While I don’t “feel like a ■■■■■■” when I get a 91 or 93 on a math test, I certainly sometimes do feel awful. And really, people shouldn’t chastise a person because they feel bad that they got an A. Different people have different expectation levels, and some just happen to be a lot higher than others’.</p>
<p>OP you’re not alone. I have two conditions for me to be satisfied with a test result:</p>
<p>I need to get the highest score that I could reasonably get. In MC tests, I usually put this as a few MC wrong, that only an insane amount of preparation would have allowed me to get. When I misinterpret a question (kinda common for me), I’m more disappointed with the teacher for not making it clearer. If it was my fault I get really ****ed at myself. In problem-solving tests where I’ve seen similar variations of the problem before, I’m only really satisfied with a perfect score. Anything less is not acceptable in my book. Once you study a problem enough you should be able to solve all similar problems that exist. Not to say I’m upset when I get a 97, but it’s just eh whatever. </p>
<p>But I’ve gotten perfect scores a lot of the times and not been satisfied, mainly because someone else (if not multiple people) got perfect scores. I’m not disappointed in myself, I’m disappointed with the teacher for not giving a harder test that would allow me to show that I’m smarter than everyone else. So the second condition is that other people need to do worse than me. It’s not that I take pleasure out of other people to doing poorly, but I just want to do better than them, especially if I don’t know them.</p>
<p>My 213 PSAT score is one of the worst academic-related moments of my life. So I’ve been really blessed, and I’m grateful for what I’ve got. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t want to do better though.</p>
<p>One thing that held me back in golf was that I was satisfied with just doing well. Like in a tournament once I got in a 3-way playoff for first and was satisfied with third. If I was in a 3-way playoff in a spelling-bee, or Science Olympiad event, or whatever I would only be satisfied with first.</p>
<p>I don’t care how other people did (actually not true, I want my friends to do well), provided that I am the best with no one else sharing that with me. Is that so bad? </p>
<p>When Tom Brady was having his career year in 2007, I can guarantee you he was thinking about the TD record. Is it any surprise he ended up beating Peyton Manning’s record by one? Or that Peyton Manning beat Dan Marino’s record by just one? As a control, Dan Marino, when he broke his own record, did so by four TDs.</p>
<p>Is Tom Brady, or Peyton Manning, thus tortured for wanting to be the best? Is Tom Brady tortured if he says he doesn’t want anyone else breaking his new record?</p>
<p>
It’s rude to be so paternalistic. I can decide what I want to be for myself. I don’t need your help. </p>
<p>
I did. For academics, I want to do as best as I reasonably can AND I want to do better than everyone else. That’s my definition of success. I know it’s a realistic standard in many cases and that’s why I have it.</p>
<p>I can definitely relate to this. I always told myself that I could not get any lower than a 98 in a class. However, this year, I started taking five AP’s as opposed to one last year. I learned that sometimes it’s just not possible to get perfect grades. No longer can I be a perfectionist when I have to stay up until the early hours of the morning just to get homework completed. Now, I’ve become satisfied with a 95 or even a low A on a test because I know that I did the best I could do to study under the circumstances. Please do not beat yourself up over this. A girl in my grade who scored perfect on her PSAT’s as a freshman had to take a few months off from school because of all of the stress she put on herself. She came back to school, but had to drop out of AP and honors classes because she felt the need to have 100’s in each class. It’s not worth putting your health in jeopardy in obsessing over grades. A hard lesson to learn is that there will always be someone smarter and more talented than you are. You will have to deal with this even more in college and the workplace. The best thing you can do is try your hardest and never lose sight of your goals in the pursuit of perfection.</p>
<p>No offense, but I don’t see why people would care about getting a 98% over, say, a 94%. I’ve always been satisfied with just getting the A and it allows me to stress out / lose sleep over more important things than a few percentage points that won’t even show up on the transcript anyway.</p>
<p>^ It’s not a stress thing or a losing sleep thing for me. I consider studying cheating lol. It just makes me feel like trash when I get a 94 when I should have been able to ace it or when someone else did better.</p>
<p>Well if you think you should have aced it, then you should study for it. There’ll be a point where you can’t just cruise through your classes and you will actually have to work for your grade. Trust me I used to be like that, but now I am taking the APs at my school that are known for being very difficult and very big with the workload.</p>
<p>I learned that in AP Calculus, where my teacher was notoriously difficult. Had to work my ass off for an A, but it paid off. (P.S. My teacher’s average score on AP Calc last year was a 4.7; everyone got 5’s except for four people who got 4’s and one who got a 3. She really prepared us well. lol)</p>