I am pessimistic but I offer nothing else in the way of being extraordinary except for the fact that I somehow manage to maintain my standing of being in the top 2% of my graduating class.

I remember the very day I became pessimistic. Up until middle school, my education had consisted of tracing pictures from coloring books and copying multiplication tables from the reference chart that was printed on the board. Tests consisted of reading a question and finding the answer already in the question, and the teacher was always there to give it to you if you still couldn’t find it. Nothing was really expected of myself nor my classmates, so I had not chosen my side in the “glass half full/empty” debate yet.

But changes came on the second day of middle school, when my classmates and I were faced with our first true “pop quiz.” Everyone came out of the class looking happy, for they felt as though they had done significantly well. However, I was not convinced that I had. I had realized that school was going to be a lot different now, and I was sure that every answer I had bubbled in was wrong. That was the first time I can remember truly thinking “I’m not going to get a good grade on this.” I went home and told my parents that I thought I had done poorly, and that was the first time I heard the word “pessimistic.”

When they quiz grades came back, everyone had failed. We had all “completely missed the point” of the passage we had read, and nobody had gotten more than 6 of the 10 questions correct. All of my classmates were devastated to say the least. Many people cried. Many people wanted to switch out of the class. However, I was not upset, because when you expect the worse, you are not disappointed when it comes.

But I am not tragically pessimistic. I have adopted my pessimistic attitude as a coping strategy to deal with the concept of failing. Although I am somehow able to avoid it, being subpar in an area that will seem minute in the final scheme of things does not upset me. While other people say that pessimists do not challenge themselves because they are sure everything will have a negative outcome, I do not listen. No, I do not weep at the world- I am too busy trying to achieve more than the critics ever will and feeling so much more joy when it happens.

Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that the world is not how I see it. Not everything is going to have a bad outcome. Some things do end up having a happy ending. I am not deaf, thank you very much. I hear everyone saying these things every single day of my life, yet I am stubborn in my ways. By thinking that everything will have a bad outcome, I somehow manage to keep myself relaxed in the stressful environment that is high school, never mind the multiple Advanced Placement classes I am enrolled in.
The position of my optimistic neighbor is much more difficult. While they become very disappointed when they do not score 105% on the impossible AP Spanish Language test, I am pleasantly surprised by my 90%. I get to enjoy the pleasures of exceeding my expectations, while others always seem upset when they manage just below the extremely high standard they have set. I am very rarely upset with my past performances, while I see them wallow in self pity while they imagine everything else they could have done.
I do not always feel pessimistic. Sometimes, I manage to convince myself that I maybe did not do as horrible as I usually think I do on a test. I feel most pessimistic when a test seems easy, for I always believe that I have “completely missed the point.”
For instance, after school at the bike rack, I feel my pessimism. That is where all of the days events are discussed, and all the afterthoughts kick in for me. A sea of negative thoughts rushes over me. I am overwhelmed with the sense of failure. I think about how hard my APUSH test really was, and how my grade will sink even further than it already is. I feel as though I am a disappointment to my parents because I don’t think I did well on my math test that everyone else is expecting an A on.
Sometimes it is the other way around. An optimistic person is set down next to me, and the contrast is just as sharp. I could sit and complain all day to him about how nothing is going to end up well for anyone- the economy of the United States will continue to get worse, gas prices will go up, I wont be able to afford a car, I will not get into the college of my choice… the list goes on and on. Meanwhile, he sits and tells me that I should be hopeful about a turn in the economy, the creation of alternative sources of fuels for transportation, a new job to help pay for a car, and acceptance into a top-ranked university. At that moment, he is normal and I am so, so, so pessimistic.
At certain times, pessimism does not define me, and I am just me. When there is no future, and just the now, there is nothing to be pessimistic about. I am able to enjoy the present, because it is already happening and there is no way that it could be any different than it is. Having either a positive or negative attitude about what is happening in the now will not change anything, so why develop one at all.
But in the main, I feel like a subtraction sign written on a piece of notebook paper. Written on a piece of notebook paper in company with plus signs and multiplication signs and division signs and a million numbers. Examine them closely, and you will see that they are all only pencil lines, and written any other way would be indistinguishable from one another. So why worry about if my pencil line was drawn horizontally instead of one vertical and one horizontal. Maybe there is an important reason that the Great Writer of Mathematics created subtraction in the first place- who knows?