Friends, I have a confession.
I was the Overachiever.
“Wait,” you might say to yourself, “chemistry and pharmacy majors do the overachieving. Don’t you just read books? How hard can that actually be?”
You would not be the first to ask this question.
Once upon a time, when I was but eighteen, someone sent me this image to enlighten me about my future path as an English major (I’m almost positive it was my father actually). While I didn’t think my college time would be a never ending booze laden, pot laced party, I did think that I would do a lot of sitting in coffee shops whilst having impressively verbose debates about postmodernism with my similarly minded friends (ah, my youthful naivety is cringe worthy!).
Maybe some of my fellows lived this quintessential fantasy, but I was not one of them. Yet, this life could’ve been mine. I can’t tell you exactly how or why things went wrong, but if I graph the evolution of my overachieving, it would look something like this:
I like to think of my college experience as a continual battle against lions. See, in the beginning, there was only a sweet little lion kitten who just wanted to look cute and play, but then a few older lions showed up and started staring at me menacingly and then HOLY SHIT THE REST OF THE PRIDE SHOWED UP AND I WAS JUST WRESTLING LIONS WITH NOTHING BY MY BARE HANDS. Actually, the lion metaphor is a little extreme and makes it sound like my overachieving was much more action-packed and exciting than it was. A better metaphor is that a bunch of slugs started crawling all over me, and it was horrible and disgusting, but the only thing I could do was get used to having slugs on me all the time. Because getting rid of them wouldn’t work, for some reason.
Latin was mostly to blame I think.
Latin is the sort of class that lulls you into a false sense of achievement and progression. In the beginning, it’s really easy, because all you’re doing is learning the words for “turnip” and “boy” and “to see,” and all you have to do is open your book, and suddenly you have an 110%! Latin is fun and easy, and so is college yay!!!!
Things went horribly, horribly wrong sophomore year.
Sophomore year, the grammar and vocabulary I had so painstakingly learned all ceased to have meaning when we started translating “real Latin.” A page of Latin was as unintelligible as a page of ancient Gaelic scribbles. Nothing made sense. But so accustomed had I become to the sweet nectar of success that I refused to back down. I became the sort of nerd who passed out on top of books, had enough flashcards to paper my entire dorm room, and not-so-subtly wished serious academic injury to those in my class who I perceived as “rivals.” This, coupled with my penchant for girly-looking clothes and unimposing appearance only made me more dangerous. Sure, small girls in dresses seem like they’re friendly and stuff, but by god, if you threaten my 110% in Latin I will make you wish as though you’d never even heard of Caesar.
By day, the sun ceased to hold meaning. The light was a brutal interruption as I scurried from library to study lounge. Occasionally, I ventured forward to eat and shower.
By night, I prowled the hallways of my dorm without pants clutching books of medieval poetry like some sort of deranged Ophelia-like shade. I sat in my lounge until the earliest hours of the morning, watching the rats scamper across the courtyard below with bloodshot eyes, waiting in agonizing terror for my 11am Latin class to begin.
His name was Dr. Coffee. He could speak and read Latin fluidly, and seemed unaware of the deep fear he inspired in others. My Latin class began with fifteen people, but only four people sat through the final. It was like being one of Henry the Eighth’s wives—you never knew if each class you suffered through was your last.
“Anyone want to translate the next sentence?” he would say, his pale eyes scanning us methodically while we all desperately pretending that there was something really, really, really interesting on our desks that required our absolute attention and consideration. He was not fooled. I could feel his eyes on me, and in that moment I knew he knew that I didn’t know what I was doing.
“Why don’t you translate the next sentence?”
I lived in fear of those words for months.
Even after I passed Latin 201, the fear stayed with me. Though I had won, I felt as though I had been permanently damaged. I was never the same again, and not really in a good way. This semester, this class, may have been beginning of my overachieving, but it was certainly not the end.
The moral of this story? If you happen to know an overachiever, please keep in mind that it’s probably not their fault. They have probably lived through some horrifyingly awful experience to make them that way.
And the second moral of this story? The Romans can still get you.
