I can hold my hands up to many examples of my many failings, yet I have begun to doubt a foundation I would usually fall back on. My grades in school and college have all generally been quite high, and while I never deluded myself into thinking that I was very intelligent, I did believe I could effectively play the academic game. If I felt I was lacking in a certain area I would simply sit down and beat it into myself. In short, when I saw an academic problem I believed that I had the tools to solve it.
I now question this. I am currently surrounded by a host of brilliant people and am beset by what seems to be an academic mountain. I have begun to wonder if I never really had the right equipment to scale such peaks or if my own training was somehow flawed. Perhaps other things have begun to distract me or perhaps I was always destined to struggle in this situation.
More worrying is the possibility that it is not an academic issue, but an intellectual one. At my current point I am determined to employ my past tactics of throwing myself into a certain area to absorb absolutely everything that I can. Should this fail, I will be in serious trouble. So this post is a mantra, a demand, a spark.
I will do my best.
-The English Student
