These sorts of decisions change your life forever

I recently find myself in a predicament. forecasting is going to come up soon, and I'm not sure what classes I should take. Which ones will be too hard? Which ones will help me get into college? Which ones are going to be fun?

The main issue I'm having is whether or not I should try to do the IB diploma.

I've always had trouble with homework. I've almost always had bad grades. It's not because I don't understand it, it's because I don't do my homework. And I don't know why. Every year, I have the same problem, I'm getting straight D's where there should be A's because I haven't done this homework or that project. I'm always sabotaging myself when it comes to my classes and it drives me crazy because I don't know why. Why do I find it so hard to do some homework every night? Why are deadlines so difficult to meet?

It's not that I'm lazy. That would be easy to conquer and too stupid of a reason for me to go on like this. I understand the subjects. Hell, I'm in advanced classes. I'm not dumb. I'm not lazy. I have the time to do the work. Why don't I do it?

I remember at the end of the year last year, Caputo was telling us about his latest social experiment that he had conducted on our class. He was explaining why he didn't give out compliments very often, or ratehr why he never called anyone in the class 'smart'. He would tell his students instead that they were 'hard-workers'. His claim was that kids would do well but once they were told that they were smart then they started to fail. his theory was that kids who were told they were smart suddenly had a whole new pressure put onto them. They had to keep being smart, they had to challenge themselves more and they crumpled under the idea that they were smart. they couldn't handle the pressure of a title as high as that. It's easy to be average, easier to be dumb, but it's hard to be smart. He thought that instead of putting thatpressure on his students, instead he would tell them they worked hard, which was easy to do. It was easy to keep up hard work, but it was just too difficult to be smart.

Now, I know I'm smart. I understand hard concepts easily and I've grown up being put into harder challenges and being told 'You're so lucky you can understand things that others can't even fathom.' Now I'm not blaming my homework sabotage on every single person who thought they were paying me a compliment. The responsibility to do my work is completely my own. I'm the one who watched her none-special-ed sister go to Thomas Edison, a Special Ed school and do better than she did at BHS. I'm the one who watches people get better grades than me who are in average classes.

Now this whole 'smart pressure' thing is only a theory, and it's not the only reason I could not be doing my work. A part of it could be habit, lack of motivation, or I'm just one of those people who likes to eat their cake first and forget the vegetables.

It doesn't really matter what causes it. What matters is how I'm going to get over it. I want to take IB, I've got the capability. I need the IB diploma to get into college, because I'm not going anywhere without a scholarship. I don't want to admit defeat to myself and NOT do IB because I'm afraid I'll flunk out. The homework load is much larger and there are new projects every week. It's getting you ready for the workload in college. The thing is, if I can't handle my homework now, how am I going to handle IB? If I can't handle my homework now, how am I even going to get into college, let alone SURVIVE it?

I don't know what to do. I don't know how I can do this, I don't even know how to start. And if I get to overwhelmed, I'll shut down. Just stop doing any of it. So how am I supposed to balance this out? To get this to work and not fuck up the rest of my life?