I feel like I should be extremely happy that I have very little homework to do this weekend, but I’m not. This is really the first time in a while that I’m not stressing over homework, but now that I’m not, I’m stressing over the fact that I have nothing to do with myself. I quit playing piano two years ago, I quit playing basketball last year, and I’m involved in absolutely no school clubs or groups or anything. The only thing I’m doing outside of school (and irrationally worrying my butt off about it) is playing cello–and I’m not even that good.

Tenth grade is almost over, and the last major accomplishment of mine occurred in eighth grade: the science fair. This is sad, because while I may have been 2nd place in the county science fair, I didn’t even rank in the state fair. So. Sucks to be me.

Then there’s the pressure! I should not be feeling this much pressure! Sure, I’m taking AP Calculus and AP European History and Honors everything else, but that’s not where the pressure is coming from. The pressure comes as a result of my personal tendency to compare myself with my sister. These days, it’s been so hard for me to please my parents and so easy for my sister to do so. She can screw up and be endlessly annoying, but because she is so perfect when it comes to everything else, my parents are willing to let it slide. I live with the enemy, and it comes in the form of my little sister. My basketball-playing, track-running, guitar-playing, crafts-making, straight-A-earning little angel of a sister. Not fair, mom and dad. Not. Fair.

And lately, I just have not been performing. I really haven’t. I have been putting much less effort into my schoolwork and have consequently been getting into more frequent arguments with my parents. My mom even likes to tell me that I should “face reality” and not worry about “getting into top colleges.” She is convinced that I am going to go to a community college. This used to be a joke my parents would use to scare me into working harder; now it isn’t a joke. Now it’s what they think is real. Not that there’s anything wrong with community colleges, but my parents’ expectations of me were once so high that they would tell me that I could get into Berkeley or Stanford or Harvard, and to have to bar lowered so much–well, it certainly doesn’t feel good. At all.

Bad as it feels, though, that’s what’s happening, and it’s really forcing me to rethink my ambitions. Looking at my achievements over the past two years, I realize that they might be right and I really might have no choice other than to go to a community college; I have not done anything notable. I may have maintained my grades, but I haven’t done anything else.

I let this get to me more than anyone can imagine. I freak out about it a lot. I’ve discovered that my capacity to tolerate pressure is minuscule. I’ve always been pretty bad at managing stress, but add all the pressures of college and my overall future, I have emotional meltdowns. Not the kind where I’ll be throwing shit around the house and screaming at everyone and tearing my hair out, but the kind where I’ll just start crying. God, I’m such a wuss.

Let it be known that my parents do read my blog, so I will likely have to deal with lectures and possibly even psychotherapy after they read this.

And when I go back to school on monday, I have to put on the “nerdy-genius-Asian girl” act so that people don’t start making fun of me for being un-Asian and whatnot.

Such is my life.

~Hedgehog