suck it up

This quarter, I'm taking a class that might simply be the death of me. I kid you not. It's called ECON 311, which is intermediate microeconomics expressed in terms of calculus. Now if you're a business major like myself, the microeconomics part might be straightforward, but the calculus part? It's just plain awful! Math is my weakest subject, and even though I mustered up A's and B's for the prerequisites, I just don't think in mathematical terms.

If you want to know why I'm concentrating in finance if I hate math so much, believe me, I want to know why too. This economics class has been the biggest source of stress and worry for me, and it's only been Week 2 of the quarter.

In fact, after the first week of classes, I was completely overwhelmed and terrified of what this quarter could do to my GPA/future. I called my dad in near hysteria complaining about how awful the course was, while he listened in mostly silence. When I was done complaining, my dad said, "Well, Sarah, you have two options." In anticipation of some wonderful insight or hidden gem of wisdom that would help to guide me in the right direction, I listened closely.

"You can either drop the class, or keep going."

Gee, Dad. Thanks. For nothing. Tell me something I don't know, please. But as I started thinking about it, he wasn't telling me something earthshaking. He was telling me what I already knew, because I already had what I needed to deal with this class. I could either drop it and deal with it later, or keep going with it and just work really hard. But complaining about it wouldn't solve anything. I'd still have to deal with it at the end of the day. It would still be there every Tuesday and Thursday waiting for me, unless I took action.

I think I have a tendency to over-complicate things that are very simple. Instead of taking action on the two things that I knew I could do, I was looking for an easy way out; a magical way of making the class less hard or dropping the class while still getting credit. There are no shortcuts, there's simply either doing or dropping.

Likewise, I think we often over-complicate our goals. For instance, we think we can't ask for a raise because we don't know all the subtle nuances to the art of negotiating. Or we can't be a social media expert because we've never had training. I have a part time gig working for a professor at my school doing website maintenance, which is slightly hilarious since I have no real experience with website maintenance...at all. Honestly, I really just know basic html. But even with my limited knowledge, I've managed to fix all his website problems and make some side income.

We're more equipped than we think. Why do we let ourselves talk our confidence down?



Oh...for the record, I decided NOT to drop the class. My midterm is next week, so we'll see how all my arduous studying pays off.