#or melodramatic

So uhhh I guess this exists now?

I never meant for it to but uhhh happy Mother’s Day lol. It’s not as much of a fic as a short story but uh we don’t have to talk about that

But yeah once I thought of these two having a conversation I couldn’t really stop thinking about it so here it is! I don’t know what I’m doing at all but hopefully someone likes it lol

No one will hear me or probably even see this post so Imma rant about dumb and nerdy but also super frustrating stuff, content in my invisibility.

Let’s get started.

OK, so I’m prepping for the AP bio test (it’s on Monday) and I’m doing one of the sample essay questions, one of the 22 minute, long ones, right? The prompt is something like, “mothers pass lots of antibodies and proteins and the sugar lactose through their milk into their tiny womb creations” and the question is in three parts: in one, you’re supposed to label and explain a cladogram with cows, pigs, horses, humans, and cats, in another, you’re supposed to talk about what would happen to a nursing tiny human if they were infected with a intestinal bacteria if the larger human they were spawned from and currently feed off of was infected with the same bacteria  a few weeks prior (and had, presumably, recovered), but we’re not going to talk about those. I was fine with those ones. I did pretty well on them, in fact. 

No, the one that bothered me was the last one. In it, you were supposed to explain, “4 steps a mother’s immune system would take to activate once it has been infected with a bacterial pathogen.” I did get this one right, but a couple of the correct answers, e.g., answers people could get points off of, just...I don’t know, really bothered me. The ones in question were things like, “antigens presented on the surface of a antigen presenting cell” and “macrophage engulfs bacteria and presents its antigens” because...I mean...those aren't really part of the immune response activation. Presenting antigens, engulfing bacteria, they’re all very passive responses. They occur in order to activate the immune system, in order to activate helper T cells and memory B cells and the like. It just...it kind of bothers me that the college board...OK this is super nerdy and makes me very happy that the chances of someone listening are minuscule, but it makes me feel betrayed somehow. Like they've let me down. I like the AP test, and the SAT, honestly. I like the way they’re structured. And that’s just...such a stupid mistake for an organization to make. Especially an organization with as much time and money as the college board. 

Also they called interleukin II a chemical but that’s irrelevant.

Sorry, I've been thinking about this a lot lately and just need to rant, pls ignore and feel free to think this is silly. But I know there are probably plenty of my friends that feel this too.

I've heard my whole life that I have "high potential". I'm currently a junior in college, starting to define my path in life and what I want to do after graduation, so I decided to go back to when this pressure of high potential started. I didn't have to think too hard.

This pressure started when I was 8 and in the third grade. That's when we had our first standardized test and the school discovered I scored off the charts (my sister did too btw. Twins, man) and tested my IQ and it was "gifted-leveled" for whatever that means (not that my mom ever even told me my IQ so like idk what it is). I was eight. years. old. And ever since then, grades mattered. Before this, i could not care less that I failed my multiplication tests, or got a 4/8 on my spelling quizzes. I just didn't care. But once they figured out "how much potential I had", getting bad grades was no longer excusable. 

From then on I worked hard to be better and be the best in school. I knew I wasn't like a super genius and so I didn't stress myself out terribly, but I tried hard enough that I graduated between top 5% and 10% of a class of 560 something 10 years later. A lot of my friends in highschool did as well! Because of this, and some good SAT scores, I, as well as my sister, received the highest merit scholarship my college offers, which I learned today was pretty selective. But we were awarded these because of how much potential we showed. 

Potential is such a dirty word to me now. "Sara has high potential" has been the mantra used to describe me for the majority of my life. And now as a 20 year old biology major in college, I'm so done.

I feel like if I do not want to go into ground breaking research, I'm wasting my potential. If I do not get any prestigious internships or work for these really cool companies post grad, I'm wasting my potential. Like honestly, I just really love animals. I don't want to be a doctor or a vet. I don't want to do cancer research. I don't really even want to do research at all. My passion lies more in the STEM education field. Like I could work at a zoo for the rest of my life and shovel poop for a living and teach kids about animals and make almost no money doing it and I'd be so happy. But how many times have people told me that if I don't do research one day, I'd be wasting my potential (that specifically started at 16 in the 11th grade btw). But that's not necessarily my dream.