Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
I envy Shayna her good fortune and her medal, but…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I envy Shayna her good fortune and her medal, but I also know that I don't have anything approaching a 3.96 GPA, nor such a deep and wide array of achievements, so there's no way I can say with any rationality, "boo hoo, they picked her instead of me." The problem is that she's such a nice, good person, and I wish I could dislike her or point to some ability or achievement that I have and that she wishes she had.
My parents think I'm wasting my potential. "You could be such a good" such-and-so, they say. I feel as though I don't have enough to wave in their faces. And it's even harder to satisfy their voices, the ones I've internalized.
I wish that at this point I could knowledgably say "I'll feel better after breakfast," or "once classes are over for the week," or "after I graduate," but I have no reason to believe any of that.
