Well it sounds like in High School you did enjoy a bit of success and approval there.

Did you experience these symptoms in High School all?

The change to College is truely dramatic because there is really no small safe setting provided as you experienced in High School, no true intimacy of that smaller environment in which you did have a sense of control. Wether you know it or not that change has upset you, your actually anxious in this big fish bowl, not use to the space and you long for a sense of those smaller walls of comfort.

As you have said yourself, you can learn and excel, you have already done so. So
you do have to consider that a change in an environment is well known to be one of the most stressful events we experience. For example, when my daughter went off to college the college she attended had a special orientation for the parents, students were not allowed. The one big message this college wanted to address with parents is that most of the Freshman WILL call home concerned, afraid, disatified, and beg to come home. They repeated emphatically, "Do not let your child come home, make them stay, no matter what they say". They made it clear that this was going to be a major adjustment for most of the students and they will react with concern and discomfort. There is a definite adjustment period that can vary from student to student.

Now as I read your different posts Sophia, I don't see an issue with your writing capacity. I think the fear you have about writing papers about what your learning has more to do with your concern about being judged in this large environment. Somehow you think that your not going to do well and you have dropped in your grades compared to High School. But did you know this is also common? And that is the other issue parents were warned about their young adult children entering College would face. So on many levels this new environment can lead all students to question themselves and their value as well as capacity to achieve in life.

However Sophia, they also said that this would eventually change as these young students would adjust to this atmosphere, work load, and very different environment from what they experience in High School. And yes, flunking is not a pleasant experience for someone who enjoyed your kind of successes in High School.

Sophia, what College does, most of all, is teach you to learn how to learn. Not everything is about A's and B's and even if someone does achieve A's and B's it is no garuntee of life success. And if Sophia is having a hard time, then Sophia may have to get a bit creative and find some tutors that can help Sophia when she is flunking in a class. My daughter had to learn to buck up and ask for help without feeling that meant she was a failure.

Ok, so your not in the National Honors Society right now, oh your thinking that your a total failure now right? Wrong, your just in a different Pool and it is truely different than High School and thats all. So, you have a new challenge here, finding ways to network and utilize what is in this new big place that can help you get on track. And Sophia, that is also life in the real world, it isn't easy, but it isn't impossible either.

Sophia, your studying psychology? Well, let me tell you, I have not been very impressed with some of the psychologists I have encountered. Maybe some of them got A's in College, but I honestly don't see their skills dealing with patients in the real world. What your experiencing right now, anxiety, depression, confusion, trying to adjust, well that is the real stuff, that is what your going to address outside College in the real world. To be honest with you Sophia, if you can find your way through this, accept what I am telling you about learning to learn and graduate, I think you might be a lot more helpful to someone like me than an intellectual that doesn't personally know what I actually feel. Failure Sophia, what does that really mean? It means extra challenge Sophia, it means that there is something put in front of you that you just have not figured out yet, it doesn't mean you cannot learn to figure it out, isnt that what a good psychologist does? A good psychologist is someone who knows all about failure and how that relates to our sense of well being psychologically and even socially. How is an Honor student going to truely help someone who has not experienced that? Unless you know the struggle and find a way to rise above, how are you going to help anyone else do the same? Do you think you are going to learn that in a book? Are you going to learn that from just making the grade?

Sophia, you were Honor Society material right? Now your struggling to pass, well, your actually learning something in that alone. And with that knowledge alone, you can sympathize with someone else who struggles right? What about a man who experiences success and loses that? What about a man who feels so troubled by that he too feels the darkness that you speak of here? If that man came to you one day for advice and you do find your way through the learning how to learn atmosphere, you WILL know how to reach to the depths of him in a way that he will understand and you may save him from the darkness. If you think of this one example it is not about you now is it? It is about your learning how to learn in all of what you experience that will serve another in a meaningful way. Believe me, someone could be a straight A student and flunk at having the capacity to help others, which is what I think you want to do right?
What makes a survivor is not the one with a silver spoon, it is the one who earned the silver spoon.

I don't really like that diagnosis called depression. I honestly think that it is too broad and if someone is experiencing stress, struggle and fatigue, the term depression is a bit extreme. I don't like it because it bears a stigma of a state of mind that is inescapable. Oh, we all fall off course in our lives, and that can be when we really learn. Ask yourself what your really pushing away, this change?, this fear of failing?,
Always remember the football field, one may be capable of running it, but that doesnt mean they accomplish the capacity to do so for a great length of time. Remember the tortus and the hare? Right now you are actually learning something, something very important, something real, not something that was tucked safely in the Honor Society. Yes, that was a nice setting, nice to have as well. But to be a good psychologist, in my opinion, it takes a lot more than that.

Sophia, read this message a few times and toss it around in your mind a bit. Forget about that young girl in the Honor Society, that is an experience that you can draw on, but not in the way you thought. What can you do now to help your situation is make a decision to simply find the resources in this environment that will help you learn how to learn. Forget about being hard on yourself, forget about entertaining SI over what you fail to do. Make a decision to learn how to learn in a totally new way and if you fail, so be it, failing is learning too. If you ever get to the point where you truely sit in a therapist's chair your going to need more than just book knowledge to be successful at it. Your question here, your frankness about your weakness, your sense of failure, that is a desire to learn, learn how to overcome. That is a good start in the right direction.

The other thing about College is that often what many enter College to be, is not always what someone ends up being. My daughter wanted to be a High School Math Teacher, she ended up a math major and is working for a big company in a higher paying job than a teaching job. Give yourself some breathing room as far as your choices go. That is a funny thing about life, it doesn't always turn out the way we think it might, doesn't always mean bad things, can be something we end up liking more.

Open Eyes