hard to please, my learning experience

My first academic endeavor at the age of 24 was a creative project. Going back to the basics of education, kindergarten style with something fun and creative!! Sounds like a great break to the monotony of paper writing that happens in graduate school, no? I think it could have been. But it only reinforced to me that my struggle this quarter so far has been the complete freedom given to me in all of my assignments.

Write a 4 page assessment of a client: sounds easy enough, except the typical length of these assessments are 7-9 pages single spaced and our was to be 4 pages double spaced. My response: unhappy about having to write something so short, wishing my professor would want something well written and a complete assessment as opposed to me just writing to fulfill a requirement. I am ridiculous.

Write a paper my NT Gospels professor says...what should the paper be about? Jesus and the Gospels. No parameters other than number of words, size of font, width of margins and due date. My response: unhappy that there are not paper topics to choose from, even though those very topics would have probably been of no interest to me and in that situation I would have complained that all the topics are lame. Again, I am ridiculous.

Write an outline of the gospel of Mark: instructions from professor, "don't make it suck" other than that, complete and total freedom as to how to outline the gospel. My response: I don't know what this guy wants from me and mine is going to suck so I should just choose to be frustrated about it...ridiculous, yes I think so.

Make a creative project about you and the characters that make up who you are. Do whatever you want there are no rules or limits to the project. Have fun! These seem to be great rules huh? I was somewhat excited about this project, except I found myself still wanting more rules or parameters. I wanted there to be something that was required of me: a number of characters, a style of creative project...something tangible to work from. I ended up starting off my existence as a 24 year old student with bad time management...leaving 30 minutes to complete this project...the one fun assignment I will have in grad school. My response: frustrated with myself, disappointed with the lack of effort able to be given to this project.

You shouldn't really care about my academic endeavors, or how disappointing I tend to be in myself. I see the reality of how hard I am to please. I do not think my professors will ever be able to win in any assignment they give me (save one paper I wrote last quarter, I actually loved writing it), but probably never again will that happen.

A reframe of the situation perhaps, something I have learned from it: Just the way people respond to freedom. For me the complete freedom of things frustrates me, I become overwhelmed with where to begin, what to do, will I be a disappointment, will I be able to do things with excellence if nothing is expected of me at all? Though this is something so many people want. Freedom from rules, restrictions, parents, responsibility. I lean towards wanting the rules, the restrictions. When those very things are given to me I rebel by being frustrated when people tell me what to do. Through needing a balance I am learning to find the beauty in the freedom that comes from boundaries. These are things we have heard before. God has set up things to live by and our country has set up laws for us not as rules and restrictions but as boundaries. Within the boundaries we can find complete freedom to play and thrive...so let us learn to thrive.