I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately on a particular topic and I have come to the conclusion that I have a confession to make.
I withdrew late from my MATH 153 course in first-year university.
There, I said it.
It doesn’t seem so bad once I write it here, it’s almost laughable, but I have hidden this information as a deep, dark secret my entire adult life. I even allowed it to become a core part of my identity. Let me break down what happened, because this confession is more about shining a light on something that wants to remain in the dark than it is about just me talking about the past.
It was my first year of university at UBC. I was accepted into the Applied Science department (i.e. Engineering) and I was in for a shock. In high school, I was on what’s called a “2 by 10” system, where I had 2 courses for 10 weeks. That is, I only really needed to think about 2 different subjects for a total of 10 weeks at a time. Needless to say, it was easy.
The shock came in my first week of university because Applied Science made all first-year students take a set course schedule. Instantly I was thrown into a schedule of 7 courses at the same time. Some of these courses were worth only 1 or 2 credits, as opposed to the usual 3 credit courses, because they were part of the foundational knowledge set for becoming an engineer (side note: these 1 and 2 credit courses were actually my favourite and made my career what it is today).
Going from a life of 2 courses to pass to 7 courses to pass is a heck of a jump for a 17 year old. But I had to do so that’s what I did. And I quickly found that I was struggling to juggle all of the course-load. And just like if I had to juggle in real life, adding ball after ball, eventually things would get too difficult and I would have to make the choice to either let one ball drop or have all the balls drop. So it is the same with courses.
I have never really liked mathematics. The way it was taught in school never brought me any of the joy or magic that mathematics has to offer. It is mainly dry material, just like history classes, and I put the full responsibility of this on the teachers. While I normally excelled at math (all the while hating it) I really struggled at my first year math course, MATH 153.
MATH 153 was mathematics for applied science students. It taught a bit more than the usual first year mathematics courses because it focused on the practical usage of math, like calculating friction coefficients using geometry (and no calculators). For once, I didn’t hate it. In fact, since my personality skews towards the practical (applied) instead of theoretical, it was right up my alley. However, juggling 7 courses at once and being woefully unprepared for it made me have to give up something. Thus, MATH 153 was chosen as the sacrificial lamb… not by me, but rather just by the randomness of the universe.
I started focusing on homework for my other courses (even the 1-2 credit ones) more than my math course. When I went to my math course I was hopelessly lost. I recall getting a mark back for a midterm or quiz or something and I basically failed the test. I just couldn’t keep up with my course-load. By the midway point in the term I found out that I could withdraw from the course and have a “W” placed on my record. “W” for withdrawn. If you withdraw from a course early enough in the term, you do not get the dreaded “W” but if you wait then that withdrawal will be a permanent mark on your transcript. And I did just that.
I felt like a failure. I’ve always excelled at school and all my subjects with very little effort. This isn’t a brag, this goes to show that my internalization of the failure went deep into me because I had never experienced it before. Not only did I fail, I also cut and run and had the mark (the “W”) to show for it. So I wore that “W” like a scarlet letter, letting it infect my personality, even though nobody could see it. But I knew it was there.
I let this scarlet letter tell me so many things that I now know to be false.
- That I don’t finish things.
- That I’m not smart.
- That I don’t know what I’m doing.
- That I don’t belong.
It was all shame, shame, shame. And so it grew inside of me, eating away at my confidence. And yet…
That shame also made me push myself harder in everything I did in life. In my other school subjects I made sure I never failed or withdrew again. I switched from Applied Science to Computer Science because I wanted to work in software (which, at the time, UBC Applied Science only dealt in hardware) and I pushed myself to show that I am capable and smart. The shame pushed me to make quality software as a software developer both in school and out. It helped me become the person I am in my career, a mix of software engineering and information security.
So while this shame enveloped me and created the imposter syndrome that rode with me as a passenger through life, it also drove me to better myself. Perhaps I could have had this drive without the scarlet letter, perhaps not. But the shame was not all bad.
And yet… and yet.
I still wore the scarlet letter. I still hid this information away until a month ago. I was talking to a trusted friend and I happened to mention this topic to them – in a sheepish way because it was such a deep, dark secret – and started to realize that it was funny.
I found it all funny, and so did the friend, because I was talking about it like I had killed someone and then covered it up. I had internalized it and made it so shameful that the mere mention of it caused me to become withdrawn. And yet, once the words exited my mouth and entered my ears, the weight and strength and power of the experience just… left. And what remained was a funny retelling of how I had made this molehill into a mountain all my adult life. And then the compassion came from not only my friend but also from within myself, that here was this 17 year old boy who was struggling with a 7-course workload and obviously something has to give, and that was a single math course where I didn’t even fail it, I just withdrew late into the term. That’s literally it. And we both realized that it was funny and silly at the same time. We were laughing about it, not to make fun of the shame that had ridden with me for all these years, but for the fact that it was such an absurd story.
And that was the moment that the shame held no power over me. That was the moment that I realized that I could talk about it openly, even to write this article about it. The shame both helped and hurt me, but mainly the experience and the lesson didn’t need to be so painful.
I hope this story helps you. I hope that it allows you to release whatever became trapped inside of you. It doesn’t need to hurt so bad. Find a trusted friend and just start talking. The words that are in your head will sound much different when they are heard by your ears, so give it a try and see how it feels. Worst case, you’ve just let another person carry some of the weight you bear. Best case, you realize that the weight you carried wasn’t yours to carry.
P.S. After I switched to Computer Science, my course-load dropped to 4-5 courses per term and no longer struggled like I did in first year. Experience helped, but so did fewer courses. I took the equivalent math course over the summer and passed. In fact, the courses were still hard, but not impossible, and I finished with good grades. So for all of the bad things the shame said to me, and for all the bad situations that just validated the false statements that shame offered as reasons for the failure, I actually succeeded in school and after graduation.