This is gonna be a lot. I don't expect anyone to read this, but I kind of need to let this out. So I'm in 11th grade right now, pursuing an IB degree. My entire life, I've been doing international boards such as IGCSE and CLSP. Basically, it costs a lot of money and I have this guilt. My parents aren't poor. We're a rich family. And yet, I'm not a very good student. I'm average, really. Each year starting from 7th grade, I'd look at my results and tell myself that next year I'd do better. But that motivation kept fading and fading, now there's nothing left. The kind of pressure I get from my parents is very strange. My family is very nonchalant. So they either yell at me or don't yell at all. Considering I have diagnosed BPD, it's very difficult for me to get any of my words out here. They often misunderstand and it ends up in big fights. Most it can go is I get beaten up. I don't mind it, really. I can take as many beatings as they'll give me if it means I get one more chance to try and get better at my studies. But I'm so stuck. I hate sitting in a classroom and doing nothing. Every day I wake up with this deep sorrow, as if I don't belong in this world or as if everything's falling apart. Some days I find it hard to even socialize. I want to study, but I just can't find the motivation to. And if I don't study, I wake up feeling miserable. It's an awful feeling. This year I joined boarding school and I think my mental health has gotten better honestly. My mother is very young. She often takes out most of her anger on me. No matter what I do, I'll always be seen as someone to be yelled at. Another thing about my parents is that they think I'm very manipulative because I start crying at the smallest hints of aggression while having anger issues myself. I just want something to fill this void inside, you know? I wanna get up, I wanna leave this place. I hate it here. I hate sitting between 4 walls. I hate myself. Maybe if I was a little smarter, I'd be the pride of our family. I'm genuinely watching myself get worse and worse everyday and I can't even do anything about it man. All I wanna do is sleep and eat. I really want chicken sushi

Question

Anonymous Practitioner · Accepted Answer

Hi there, i just wanted to begin by saying that just by reading this I think you're a very strong, very determined person and I don't mean this lightly, I'm sorry you're going through all of that with your parents, you don't deserve it, I understand your fear of being mediocre and not being good enough but trust me, mediocrity isn't something that you're born with or something that stays with you. I myself have done IGCSE and I'm doing ASL this yr, and I don't know how much this advice will help you, but it's worked very well for me personally, first thing id say is learning all the concepts thoroughly, rlly sit with yourself and make sure there's not even a bit of a knowledge gap, this is very essential, don't try to rush it, take your time, next, make a very condensed version of what you've learnt per subject, for me what I did was that for every section in physics (my personal worst) id write one page notes on it, sort of like a cheatsheet, next do a lot of past papers, atleast like 20 of them or even like 8-10 is good, point is what I'd like you to do is everytime you make a mistake, or even go slightly deviant from the mark scheme write it in a notebook seperately, with the correct answer and what to remember,and make a collection of these mistakes, do this for all your main subjects, and everytime u attempt the next paper, read through those mistakes, and try to keep them in mind while writing the paper, then, the day of the exam, the morning before go through the condensed notes quickly, it won't take too long as you've been doing papers so u might know the essence, and then just before going into the hall go through ur mistakes so they're fresh in ur head, another thing I did which helped me with time management specifically is reducing like 20 mins during my practice paper sessions, so in the real exam, id still have 20 mins left to check my paper or make some changes, I hope this helps, and just know that you can improve, you're not going to be stuck here for your whole life, you're going to be great, you're going to do great, and ik this is a bit of a long response, I'm srry but I hope once ur exams are over and once you feel like uve done ur best, which I know u will, ull finally get some rest, and ur chicken sushi, best of luck