I DID IT!

Wow! I got my essays and term paper back for ethics this morning. I was very nervous because they were 50% of my grade (all totalled) and I didn't think the term paper and one of the essays went well at all. I GOT FULL POINTS! Not only did I get the maximum points, the professor wrote, "Great Job!!" at the top of my term paper. That landed me a solid 99.3% in that class. Since my sociology test this afternoon went exactly as anticipated, that means I landed all four classes with very solid A's.

I'm so excited that I want to explode. I mean, straight A's is my goal and if I had gotten less than that I would have been seriously pissed at myself. But I guess I didn't think I could actually pull it off. Especially given how horribly critical thinking started off and how difficult my final papers in ethics turned out to be. But I DID IT!

At the same time that I am so proud of myself, I keep wondering why this happened. Why did I get such high scores on all of my assignments in all of my classes when people I know at my college (and even in my classes) got B's or barely scraped by with their A's? I can't figure out what the difference is.

Did I have more time to devote to my studies? I don't know. I have four kids with crazy busy schedules. We had numerous outbreaks of various types of viruses. We also recently got health insurance for the kids so we had physicals scheduled, a million dentist appointments, a couple of specialists, and weekly therapy with Kid-1. I am doing hospice volunteering and trying to spend time with my mom. I even did NaNoWriMo this year with 6 - 10 teenaged girls - every single school day in November except two. (One I had the flu so bad I couldn't see straight and one I had a doctor's appointment to go to.) So... more time? Not than most of the people I know from school.

Do I want it more? A couple of the kids I am thinking of are just that: kids. I'm no where near a kid any more and I've been waiting and struggling for 15 years to get back here. I've been planning every minute detail of this for so long it's scary. So I take it seriously. I pay attention in class - I go to class. I take the notes and study them before the tests. I do the research I need to do. And I refused to give up. So do I just want it more than some of the people that got B's and don't mind?

Part of me wants to think a little of it has to do with intelligence. Did I triumph like that because I'm smarter than others? Of course, the rest of me begins to giggle hysterically at that thought. Yes, I learned the material easily. But it's all introductory level classes. I learned the critical thinking material on my own and then taught it to some of my other classmates but that's because I've always been trained to think logically and critically. My papers got high grades because I love to write and so I've done a lot of it. The fact that I only missed a total of 9 questions out of all of my assignments, tests, and papers in all of my classes is just a reflection of the work I put into it. It's not like these were difficult classes.

I suppose in the end it doesn't really matter why I did so well. And I have no business comparing my performance to anyone else's. I guess I just feel so weird because I almost never come out ahead when I compare my performance to anyone else's. Regardless of why, it looks like I did something right this semester. I hope I can continue it forward into next term and beyond but for right now I will simply bask in the glory...