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Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Today: Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

 Daily writing prompt

Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.


College. I was in a University I liked, taking a course I didn’t like, in an academic org that without fail always made me feel stupid. Mind you, I didn’t take it against anyone. It’s just that the course was too hard for my brain. A subject my peers could understand in one semester, I had to take thrice. I thought getting into an academic org would help me but I just felt more and more inferior. Everyone was so smart and I felt so little, so stupid.


I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. When I failed the entrance exam, my parents found a way to put me in the waitlist, but it meant taking a course I didn’t choose, and losing a semester of school. It was important for me to get into this uni because it’s a prestigious one, and my older sister is there.


The only available courses for me were in the engineering department, because they only looked at your Math and Science entrance exam scores. Somehow my scores put me in the 90th percentile, which gave me a good chance. My preferred courses looked into English and Reading as well – where I scored low, so that pulled my percentile ranking down.


So yeah, I entered on the 2nd half of the schoolyear. And spent 2.5 years feeling so stressed out at school. No matter how much I studied I just couldn’t grasp anything. After failing a lot of my prerequisite subjects, which is a lot of Maths and Sciences, and realizing I won’t get anywhere with this field, I decided to leave.


My parents supported me because they knew I was having such a hard time and they didn’t want me to suffer so much, specially when they realize it might take me a decade to graduate with this kind of brain haha.


So I left and transferred to a nearby college, where my dad taught. I picked a course I was interested in, started as a new freshman, and enjoyed school. I had friends, got a part time job, was busy with several orgs, and loved it. I graduated with latin honors and even met my husband there.


So in a sense it all worked out.

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