Saturday 3 March 2007

Progress Status: Graduated Honours Class 1

It gives me great pleasure to announce that I have completed my Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) Honours degree with a grade of Class 1. That is, in case you're not sure, as good as it gets.

This happy news made me feel overwhelmingly ... relieved. I know it's a bit of a lacklustre emotional response but, let's be honest, no-one was really surprised by the news. You all expected it, even I expected it, and an utterly unsurprising positive outcome is always going to be a bit of an anti-climax for everybody. The expectation puts a natural limit on the excitement that it's possible to experience, so special thanks to everyone who remembered to say "Congratulations" before they said "I knew you would."

Totally unfairly, the high expectations that limit pleasure at meeting them do absolutely nothing to reduce the terrible, crushing, grinding terror that you might not. This is the great tragedy of chronic overachievement: success is experienced as a reduction in anxiety instead of an increase in happiness.

Having said all that ... YIPPEE!

2 comments:

rswb said...

Yeah, yeah, congratulations and all that, but I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the significant impact I had on this outcome as a consequence of my fantastic efforts at being useful and contributary.
Oh, and by the way, all of my friends (with the possible exception of Nat) know you only as "evil Heather".

Geoff said...

Evil Heather?

I've known her as that for 29 years. But I congratulated her anyway!