A sad yet liberating realization

The last few weeks have been full of papers, projects, and presentations for me. As I was writing the most recently completed one, I had a realization. I was agonizing over things, thinking, there's no way the professor will think this is any good. And that's when I realized: I have no control over my grade. I usually put in about the same effort on all of my projects and papers. Which is a decent effort given the time constraints. And sometimes I get As and sometimes I get Bs. Occasionally, I'll know I did a mediocre job and I will get a mediocre grade, but just as often the professor thinks it's great. Or I will think I aced something and I'll get a B. So rather than try really hard and disappoint myself. I'm just going to do the usual and leave it up to the whims of my professors since even if it's an A effort, if he or she is having a bad day or didn't like what I was wearing last week, I might get a B anyway. Or conversely (and I like this better), it's a B paper, but the professor likes me or is just feeling the holiday spirit a little more than usual and give me an A for fun. Oh to have that power.