Same as I've always been

Over the years, I've grown quite fond of finding patterns in the way I cope with things or continuity in the way I carry out my life and deal with what's important to me. Sometimes, these mechanisms are good and they have helped me get to where I am today. Sometimes, they are bad and have also helped me get to where I am today...

So today, my mom and I went through all her papers to try and find either my Guatemalan ID, or my Guatemalan birth certificate. We were unsuccessful in both accounts. However, we did find a lot of old and cool stuff. For example, I found out that as a little girl, I had terrible allergies that kept me from going to school a lot. That happened again when I was a little older, and starting high school. I didn't have allergies, but I stayed out of school most of eight grade because I was sick. I always thought I exaggerated to get to miss class, but I also discovered I didn't. Like when I was a little preschooler, I had legitimate reasons to be away from the classroom. I just downplayed them in my head so that most of the burden of missing school would fall on me, and not my health.

I also found a lot of my old report cards. I was very much surprised with the fact I had straight A's. Over the (very) many years I've been in school, I've always thought of my self as a more or less average student that just so happened to end up doing a PhD. I've never really considered myself very intelligent, although I freely admit I am not a complete moron. Tonight, as I went through the papers with my mom, I told her that I never realized that I kept getting good grades. I only recall not being as good as I thought I could be (something I still feel today).

As I hone in on my last year as a twenty-something, its nice to see some connecting dots to all that I've been doing: I was getting good grades and enjoying school, despite being sick and having problems coping with being back in Guatemala after our small stint abroad. My teachers described me (in my report cards) with many of the same character traits that I have today, and as I was going through my stuff I realized that I didn't stumble into school, I worked for it over the course of many years. A life project, if you will. And I was doing it without noticing that I was working so hard, or that I enjoyed it so much. I guess its those little tricks we play on ourselves...

Could it be I actually had a plan behind my madness? Your guess is as good as mine. For now though, I will just entertain myself with the memories of the very willful little girl that taught herself how to read so she could program the VCR to tape her cartoons :)