{"id":28566,"date":"2020-02-06T14:02:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T19:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=28566"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:58:30","slug":"jaclyns-blog-good-enough-or-however-youre-doing-is-good-enough-or","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2020\/jaclyns-blog-good-enough-or-however-youre-doing-is-good-enough-or\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaclyn's Blog – \u201cGood Enough\u201d or \u201cHowever you\u2019re doing is good enough\u201d or ???"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Jaclyn's Blog – \u201cGood Enough\u201d or \u201cHowever you\u2019re doing is good enough\u201d or ???\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

This post is part of the Life in English<\/a> Student Blog<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Jaclyn
Jaclyn Legge<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For me, the winter semester always starts slow and hopeful. The holidays melt off in little bits and the glow of new year\u2019s resolutions waft through the air. I can never keep track of exactly when the semester hits me with the contempt of a banana peel on a wet, yellow floor, but I tend to go from \u201cmotivated and doing just fine\u201d to \u201cI don\u2019t even know what I don\u2019t know\u201d pretty quick. I\u2019m not there yet, but I\u2019m waiting for it to take me by surprise like it always does. This is to say, my semester\u2019s going great so far, how about you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since I started university, I have taken lecture notes on my laptop. Class begins; I start typing, organizing themes and thoughts accordingly and copying the instructor\u2019s colourful turns of phrase (excerpt from my religion class notes: \u201cworms don\u2019t get enlightened\u201d); class ends, I stop. I never met anyone who took as thorough notes as me, and, yes, I used to be incredibly proud of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet this semester, without really deciding to, I switched to a notebook. Syllabus week passed, the lectures began in full force, and I wasn\u2019t falling behind at all, like I worried would happen. I was absorbing information in a different way and writing notes efficiently. I used to think that power-typing every detail made me pay better attention, but it turns out that doodling in the margins while I pay attention for key thoughts helps me listen just as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My aversion to handwritten notetaking had nothing to do with memory recall or the allure of the internet. It\u2019s just easier to make mistakes on a laptop, where you can backspace and rearrange text as you please. With handwritten notes, you risk messing something up, scratching it out, taking time to rewrite it properly, and losing the thread of the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I had the power to reverse time by one second at the cost of one hour of my life, I would undo every erroneous pen stroke I\u2019ve scratched out from my notes and die glamorously young under mysterious circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t like being faced with my own mistakes. Pen blackouts, eraser marks, and white-out are all reminders that my cursive is still wonky, I\u2019m terrible at spelling French names, and my first thoughts aren\u2019t always good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one ever really, really <\/em>taught me it was okay to be wrong. Or perhaps no one taught me how to be okay with being wrong. I did<\/em> learn that it was wrong to feel bad about being wrong so maybe I should stop being a crybaby about it. Maybe harbor my feelings of failure deep inside myself and let them steep. This won\u2019t come back to bite me at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sob story, to the tune of the world\u2019s tiniest violin: around late elementary school I was deemed a \u201cgifted learner\u201d which at the time I think meant that I received good grades and didn\u2019t require any help to do it. I probably used to be praised for getting good grades, but good becomes normal, normal becomes expected; I stop telling my parents about my grades, they assume I\u2019m fine, and I assume I\u2019m fine, too. I assume I will always be fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nobody is good at everything, right all the time, or fine all the time. I wish I could tell myself these things with forgiveness. But I am not the flower which blooms in adversity. Take away my sun and rain, and I will wilt and blame myself for being dry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m hard on myself because I don\u2019t want to believe anything is too hard for me. I want my first try to be my best, and for my best to always be enough. This is a terrible philosophy for a writer. It doesn\u2019t help me as a student either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we, the students, tell if school is getting harder or if we\u2019re just falling behind? There are many factors to consider here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n