I Was Praised for Avoiding My Grief

Honestly, I think the school system is so flawed. It is all based on excelling at certain things that most often do not translate into real-world success. We learn for years, just to enter the workforce and have most things that we learned not even translate. And on top of it, we offer external validation to those that do well and condemnation to those that don't. Don't get me wrong, it teaches hard work and work ethic, but there is so much that is missing. Unfortunately, for me, I fell into this trap of almost being a slave to this external validation. So much so that I even pursued a degree that I didn't particularly enjoy just because I could.

Looking back, I pursued a degree in engineering for all the wrong reasons.

My journey through school was an interesting one and so I'm going to start from the beginning.

Throughout elementary school, I was often in the principal's office. I was a troublemaker in class and more so in the schoolyard. I don't have much recollection of those times, so I won't go too deep into it. I do remember, though, that coming home from school, my mom always emphasized how important it was that I got my work done. I didn't have the rules that some of my friends had of no TV during the week. I did have the rule that I couldn't do anything before I got my work done. No going to the park to play sports, no TV, no seeing friends. Once I got my work done, I was able to do these things.

As I went into high school, this ambivalence toward school continued. I was definitely a below-average student. At the school I went to, in order to get into the science program going into grade 10, you needed a 75 in both math and science. I vividly remember my mom lobbying for me to go into it. She told me that I should keep my doors open. I had no interest in applying for it, and not even that, but my grades were borderline not good enough. I remember just sneaking by and so I went into it to make my mom happy.

That summer, she died.

The next year, in grade 10, I made school pretty much my whole identity. I was in the library for 10 hours per day, I was doing really well in all of my classes and I wanted to stay away from home as much as I could. There was a major void at home with my mom not being there and any type of avoidance was what I was looking for. I found it in school.

I went from barely getting into the science program to getting a 98 on my science government exam. All of the adults around me congratulated me for doing so well in school. I would hear things like "wow, you must be doing really well if you're getting such good grades."

My mom had just passed away. I was 15 years old. I had a very close relationship with her.

I was not doing well.

That is one of my biggest problems with school. I used it as my first way of avoiding, my first coping mechanism, and I was praised for it. Yet, when I started doing drugs, I was given the opposite feedback. The issue is, I was using them in the exact same way. I was using them both to numb. I was using them both to escape. Both of them were bringing me further and further away from facing my grief.

One of them, though, was praised, while the other was not.

This addiction to school stuck with me through CEGEP and college. In CEGEP, my anxiety started to get really bad. I dealt with it by seeking that external validation that school brought me. I had a deep-seated belief that I wasn't good enough and for 15 minutes after each time I got back a grade, I finally felt like I was enough. The problem is, that feeling would go away as quickly as it came and I would go back to searching for it.

Finally, the time came to start thinking about what came next. I told my dad that I wanted to go away to school. I thought making the geographical change would solve all of my problems. My dad told me that if I did well in school, then I could go wherever I wanted. Again, back to the grades.

Everything at that age for me revolved around my grades. If I was doing well, I felt good. And so that's what I did. I did well. I studied enough to feel confident that I was going to get 100 on every exam I took.

Because of how much work I put in, I did well and because I did well, I had the opportunity to go to engineering school. This high, prestigious program. Those were my reasons for wanting to go into it. Not because I saw a career for myself in it. Not because I was interested in it.

Obviously, one of the flaws of school is asking an 18 year old to make a decision about spending the next 4 years learning about something they want to pursue for the rest of their lives. How is an 18 year old supposed to know?

Turns out, I didn't want to be an engineer after all. After I really reflected on all that I just wrote about, I realized that I was doing what I was doing because I was searching for my mom's approval. Approval that I was never going to get by the way because she was gone.

I learned that I needed to start living my life for myself in honour of her. I knew when I got sober that my purpose in life was to help other people get through similar things to what I went through. After I graduated with my degree in engineering, I moved to British Columbia to work at a rehab for a year during my gap year. After that, I decided to go back to school to pursue a Master's of Psychology.

So here I am again, starting back at school, but on a new note and for a different reason. This time, I am not simply looking for a degree. I am looking to learn how to better support individuals and be able to do what brings me the most joy in life.