Where did I go wrong? Did I go wrong?

Since I'm alone, I can finally sit and think. I've got no other choice.

I'm trying to figure out why I am the way I am, and why I hate this state of personality.
I've been thinking a lot about failure and how terrified I am of it. My fear comes from all the experiences I had
when I was a kid--all my experiences in school. Sitting here my tasks has been to write a personal statement on why I want to be a physician and why I would make a good one. It has turned into a quest for answers. I wrote the following paragraph as an introduction:

If someone approached me when I was sixteen and said, “You are going to not only go to college, but aspire to be a doctor”, I would have probably dismissed their claim as foolish and highly unlikely. This envoy could have found me in Greene, Maine, at my normal haunt: a set of tracks that looked out over a hay field. Growing up in a small, rural town like Greene stifled certain possibilities for the future in my mind. Moreover, I was never that good at looking ahead. Since an early age, school was a task I ...

As I started to think about the next thing to say and where this essay was going in general, I started to ask myself questions about my past. This was the first one: why had I done so poorly in school?

The problems started when I was young. I remember so vividly a particular instance of failure that occurred in the second grade. Greene Central School, the north wing, Mrs. Whalen's class; she had asked the class how one might spell the word "you". Me, being a know-it-all from a very young age, confidently raised my hand and gave my answer:

"U", I answered perspicaciously, but incorrectly.

Thus, my hatred of the English language and its elusive rules began.

Most people don't know this, but after 2nd grade I was pulled out of school to be home schooled by my moms. She was on some sort of religious kick at the time. So, in third grade I attended a sort of religious school in my basement at 64 Key Hill road. Our text books were bought as a package from the Christian bookstore in Auburn and apparently geared toward the type of parent my mother was at the time: ambitious, devoted, craving change, paranoid, annoyingly religious. [The package came complete with a science book in which naked Adam is one with all animals, including a small dinosaur! In this way the Christian authors of the book handled the thorny issue of large reptiles in the fossil record well before man. Oh wait, nope, that doesn’t explain ANYTHING.] This year was one of the more happy ones in my life. My mother is an amazing academic with a disposition for science. My love affair with the natural world and its known science took root in this period. That year we went on many field trips to various museums and beauty spots in Maine. I specifically remember our section on geology during which we went to South Paris. This place was an old quarry where--allegedly-- one could happen upon some rose quartz or green tourmaline, maybe some amethyst. That year I had soaked up so much science that I was grades ahead of any of my peers. It was a short-lived thing though, both the home schooling and the feeling of academic stardom. The next year I was back in public school. That same year my parents got divorced, my first bouts of anxiety began and I’m sure I had a pet that died or something. I repeated the four grade, my brothers went to Florida with my mother, my dad hired a real skank for a babysitter. Fifth grade found me in Maryland with my mother and sister. The next year I was back in Maine, where I stayed for the remainder of my schooling. Middle school was hell for me academically, the same for high school.

It is interesting, kinda, that so much of my schooling was punctuated by spurts of incredible energy (as I tired to catch up), followed by complete laziness. Where were my parents during all of this? Fuckit I’m done writing for now