Blaaaaargh

In guttural onomatopoeia: blaaaaaaaaaargh.
In English: I’m having a bad day, I have taken to communicating in a stream of unintelligible mumbling (more so than hitherto), a pile of highly unwelcoming homework awaits, and for some reason, this strikes me as the perfect set of conditions in which to write a blog post.

I should explain the set-up. I was at a friend’s 18th on Saturday, which ran into Sunday, which ran into my time to get lovely and prepared and do my homework for Monday. This has necessitated using my “Could I give you it tomorrow, please?” line in no fewer than three classes, and I try to utilise it sparingly, or else the diligent-student-who-forgot-it-this-one-time impression turns into more of a dosser-who’ll-never-actually-do-it sort of effect. I also didn’t have time to sleep properly or put on make-up, and I yawned and stretched throughout the day, staring darkly at the clock in every room that had one. I have a strictly scholastic variety of dissociative identity disorder, having been everything from an exemplary student to a self-sabotager who took a certain pride in not trying, but for obvious reasons, I’m trying to bring the former to the fore this year, so this is not good.

Along with having scholastic dissociative identity disorder, I’m also bipolar about how I think I’ll do in the Leaving. My predictions hop straight from maximum points to perhaps enough to do Applied Goat Husbandry in the University of South-West Leitrim, with nary a happy medium in sight. I’m swinging towards negativity at the moment, but in a resigned sort of way, which means I’m also trying to think positively about my probable resounding lack of success. As such, I’ve compiled a list of advantages of being a failure for those who, like me, need a pick-me-up.

1. People don’t expect things from you. Now, I’m sure all my fellow self-sabotagers (word!) will identify with this one. Success is terrifying. Not only do people expect you to maintain your current standard, they expect constant improvement. If you fail long and hard enough, they’ll eventually leave you alone to wallow in your mediocrity, which is, of course, what you’re aiming for here.

2. You know that your friends aren’t just using you for your Leaving Cert results. I’m not sure why anyone would bother using anyone else for their results, ever, or what possible benefits they could derive from it, or any of that jazz, but failures know that they’re not instead of just strongly suspecting it. So there.

3. Any small success will be met with disproportionate praise. If you’re good enough at failing, you can get to the point where people will pat you on the back for remembering to write your exam number. Some would view this as condescension, but those people are probably successful, which means their friends are obviously just using them for their Leaving Cert results. If they even have friends. Which brings us to the next point:

4. People genuinely want you to do well. Let’s face it: when you wish most people good luck, what you mean is, “Good luck as long as you’re not applying for my course, in which case I hope my points will whip yours into submission before cracking their skull open with a giant novelty pen.” Not so when it comes to you, my failsome compatriots. They know there’s no way in hell you can compete with them, but they want you to do well enough that the post-results conversation won’t be too awkward.

5. People believe you when you say that you didn’t study. Furthermore, you can accuse 500+-ers who make this claim of talking out of their arse, pointing out that you didn’t study and you were 20 points short of Candle-Wax Sculpture in Central Louth Institute of Technology. They can’t say to your face that this is because you’re not as smart as them. They’ll think it, but they can’t say it.

6. If your parents have been living vicariously through you prior to your failure, you get the slightly twisted satisfaction of ruining someone’s vicarious life. That’ll show ’em.

I hope I’m being sarcastic. Everything I say or type is in inverted commas to the extent that I (and, I fear, the people around me) stop noticing, so it’s rather difficult to tell. Anyway, that’s enough glorification of failure, ironic or otherwise, for the moment. Oh, and because I mightn’t have the time to comment on all the new blogs for a bit: a big generic ‘hi’ to all the new people!

7 thoughts on “Blaaaaargh”

    1. Thanks! Haha, I feel so productive, using my pessimism for the greater blogging good. Or some such.

  1. Are Candle-Wax Sculpture and Applied Goat Husbandry the new basket-weaving and jam-making fake courses?

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