Underachiever

So. Thanks to the good people who gave the history department a grant to hire me, this semester I'm in charge of all the menial work connected to National History Day. Like...I get to make room signs. A lot of room signs. But I get to write down "Research Assistant" on my grad school applications. Not "Girl Who Prints Off Room Signs." Which is slightly less impressive.

ANYWAY. It's a secondary school competition, which I kind of figured was going to end up being mostly high school. Because, um, academic competition. Like, these kids have to write major papers or make documentaries or something. And then talk about them.

But it turns out that most of the students are in MIDDLE SCHOOL. Like, seventh and eighth grade. Like, babies.

Honestly. There's a girl from a middle school who created an exhibit on MRI innovations.

MIDDLE SCHOOL.

Her mom probably still makes her dinner.

So I feel like a complete loser because I'm 22 and ten weeks away from a degree and my main contribution to this project is unevenly cut room signs (fine motor skills- I do not possess them) and oh, I've spent the last three weeks following this one professor around because hello, perfectly good 3.9 GPA womb RIGHT HERE and we could have adorable babies who probably wouldn't have any friends but they would be SMART DAMMIT and yeah, I'm going to stop talking right now.

(What? He smiles at me. It's cute.)

(Okay. I'll be normal now.)

Anyway. I'm very familiar with this feeling. I'm not an idiot. I've always done quite well in school, I went to college for high school, I've always had friends, I've never killed anyone, blah blah blah.

But. I was homeschooled.

And if you ever want to feel badly about yourself? Hang out with other homeschoolers. Because they are, without a doubt, the most obsessively brilliant overachieving people you will ever meet and while yes, a good 45% of them are just plain crazy, there are some genuinely nauseatingly perfect people who homeschool.

And of course we were friends with all of them.

(They would be able to ell you that that last sentence should have been about three sentences if someone who was worthy wrote it.)

(Or they could tell you that the Jesus is coming back and the only way to get on the comet to heaven is to become Wife #85 of Prophet John over there.)

(Like I said, it goes both ways.)

So. I guess I am qualified for this job. Because I have, in fact, been in a conversation with someone who told me that her two-grades-advanced daughter was writing a book in her spare time and doing stained glass work to relax. While all I really wanted to do was go home and watch Star Trek because maybe by the 23rd century the brilliant people would have stopped mating and died out and my measly advanced science course would look halfway impressive.