Chickenminnie’s Weblog

One of the things that drives me crazy about myself (and probably my friends) is the fact that I have no idea what is going on with regard to movies or television shows either current or past.  Colleagues of mine are constantly talking about the latest episode of “Lost” or “The Office” and one of them will invariably turn to me and say, “Remember that episode where …” and I know I’m done.  Not being a television watcher puts me at a definite disadvantage when it comes to a lot of conversations.

Ken is amazed by this.  He grew up in a troubled household where gluing oneself to the television was the only means of escape, so he assumes that all childhoods were spent this way.  He has seen vast quantities of cartoons, movies, sit-coms, game shows…you name it.  He loves to spring tv trivia on me just to get me going, or he will say, ” Remember so and so from the whatsis show”?

The reason for my apparent lack of television  knowledge is that as a young person we didn’t have a television until I was around 5, and even then we were not allowed to watch it much.  Life on the farm meant there really wasn’t much time for such foolishness with all the chores,  so our exposure to television was minimal.    I watched more television in my 20’s and 30’s but becoming a college student put the brakes on that; there’s nothing like homework to put a serious dent in your tv time.  Now most television is almost painful for me to watch and I find it vastly preferable to read or surf the net.

Movies are another knowledge area I’m weak on probably due to the fact that going to a movie is a mini-commitment to sitting still for around two hours.  I have to really want to see a movie to do that; it’s also annoying that it’s too dark to knit in your average movie theatre.  My movie buff friends are all rolling their eyes right now and thinking, “come on!”, but it’s true; if I have to sit still for a long period of time, my hands need to be doing something.

The good news about all of this is that while I may not have any idea what’s going on in Hollywood, I do read Time Magazine from cover to cover every week and am a faithful listener of NPR.  This does make me a bit of an information snob, but it’s a lot more interesting than hearing who Lindsey Lohan is hooking up with.  Whoever she is.

I got my first B.

It has taken me a couple of weeks to process the fact that I am no longer a straight A student, but there it was in all its electronic glory when I checked my final  grade on the Sage website.  My hopes for a 4.0 have been dashed by a Java programming class.

There is a bit of a battle going on inside of me about this.  My rational and pragmatic self is reminding me how tough the class was and how many hours I put into the assignments and reading; I never missed a class, took copious notes and probably drove my instructor nuts with questions.  Surely I deserved an A for effort if nothing else.

My irrational perfectionist self feels like a loser who only got a B because the instructor felt bad about giving me a C, and I should be damned grateful for a B because I stink at programming.  This is the same self who wonders if all the programmer jokes I have made over the years have come back to bite me like some sort of weird kharmic debt, and who questions the sanity of going  to college at the ancient age of 47.

I was feeling really twisted up by all of this inner turmoil and shared my B with a couple of friends using my best sad face.  To my surprise, most people’s reactions were along the lines of  “so what?”.  The overwhelming majority said they would have been thrilled to get a B, and that I should relax; clearly I was making way too much out of this.  A colleague of mine who is now a doctoral candidate even told me he was lucky to get C’s as an undergrad!

After living with the idea of no longer being an A student I have decided that I might as well come to terms with it and learn to embrace my B Student status; it’s difficult, but I realized that the emotional overhead just isn’t worth it.  At the end of the day the journey counts a whole lot more than the destination.