Regrets

I'm being unusually open today, am I not?

Ran into my ex-lecturer in school today, and he alerted me to the publication of his article (I was one of his research assistants). So of course I looked it up and scanned through it. Coincidentally enough, today was a big day for me (more on that later, hopefully), and I also had a conversation with LSB on a related topic (related to what I'm going to blog about, of course).

Some time ago, a friend asked me whether I regretted not going to LSE. I told her no, but the truth is, at times I do regret it. Reading through my prof's article, I suddenly really really wished I was still on track to becoming someone like him, someone who could write an article like this.

A few days ago another friend commented I have very low self-esteem when it comes to my academic essays because I never think they're any good. I retorted that it was because I have high standards, and don't kill me but it's true. I was, on hindsight, a very competitive student except that I never competed with my peers. I always compared my essays (those that I cared about anyway) to my profs' essays, and of course my essays always failed miserably in my eyes. In all my years in university, I've never written an essay that I'm satisfied with. No, not a single one. I do believe that somewhere in my head there's an image of what a good essay should be like, an essay with perfection so abstract that I cannot actually say what it would be like, except that I've never written one.

My impossible standards and resulting dissatisfaction with myself made for a very neurotic, insecure academic me. I think that as a result, my life in university was a very stressful, emotional one, being always mired in angst and insecurity. I didn't care what anyone told me, didn't care what the grades indicated. To me I was never good enough, and if I got good grades/compliments that made it worse because I felt like a pretender. I never deserved any of it.

Back to the point.

I think that somewhere in my very screwed up mind, I still want to compare myself with my profs, and I still want to be my profs. So do I regret my departure from academia? Some times more than others. Tonight the regret is especially acute.

But I do think that I need something besides the standards of academia with which to measure myself. I do think that I need to experience something outside of academia, face new challenges to prove myself to myself. I also think that the hordes of people who've just assumed that I was going into academia have pissed me off with their assumptions so much that I simply decided to flip them the finger and do something else. (kidding!) More importantly, I have other goals very important and very dear to me that could be served better by a non-academic route.

I'm hoping, really hoping, that what I've done pays off, that I didn't make yet another bad decision by opting out. I've got a bad feeling that in a few years, nay, in a few months, I'll be taking back every single word of this post. But I've got another bad feeling that it won't be the first time and it won't be the last, and life in general is like that and sucks very badly.

Goodness, I do regret it tonight. But there's a price to be paid for every decision, and I hope that regret is the heaviest cost of this decision. I'll cross my fingers, hope for the best, and live with the regret.