I think graduate school is smarter than me. However, as Eddie was kind enough to point out, if it weren't smarter than me, I wouldn't be learning anything. Nevertheless, I am still finding myself vacillating between feelings of anxiety and stupidity, neither of which I am particularly fond and both of which cause me a lot of duress. I've got a midterm in my contemporary criticism class on Friday, and today I was going over some of the material, and it completely freaked me out. I don't understand structuralism. Or post-structuralism and deconstruction, for that matter. And I'm trying to figure out how I can begin to understand these things before the test, and it seems impossible, like my brain just isn't quite adequate to understand all of this information.

This frustration has me dealing with an existential crisis of sorts. What am I doing here? Do I belong in graduate school? Am I really smart enough to do this? Did my intelligence reach its plateau in my years at Union? Why can I not write a decent close reading of a poem?

Furthermore, am I doomed to be always insecure about every aspect of my life? Why is it so easy for me to get worked up about a boy and then think the worst if he doesn't call when I thought he would? Why do I feel so much like my life is just this endless attempt to win people over? I want it all to stop, but I don't know how. How do I undo a lifetime's worth of erroneous thinking? Help.

(I think this is what I wanted to say earlier this week but couldn't, only now that I've managed to say it I don't really feel any better.)