The Egonerd Syndrome

I self-diagnosed a mental illness recently which I shall name the egonerd syndrome. I shall analyse myself for this new-found illness for the benefit of all medical researchers and psychologists.

I have been getting terrible grades recently. It started with my philosophy term paper which I got 15/25. It most probably translates to a B- which I have difficulty accepting. It was such a horrific experience getting B-. I took a peek at other people's papers and found several 15's too. I hope our tutor had undermarked us and convert our raw scores to something more presentable.

Symptom 1: People suffering from the egonerd syndrome are unable to accept low academic grades and constantly look for clues to external factors that might have contributed to their failure.

Then I got back my Japanese paper which I scored 46/60. I was disgusted with how badly I failed my listening comprehension section. And I was scolding myself for changing to an incorrect answer for my reading comprehension section due to my indecisiveness. Seeing other people get 35 did not reduce my cognition of how badly I have done and hearing other people getting 50+ disturbs me.

Symptom 2: People suffering from the egonerd syndrome are perfectionists who have high expectations of themselves. They desire to be amongst the top scorers and are in considerable stress when they are unable to do so.

Then I got back my 2nd stats test which I have deproved from 27.5/30 to 22/30. It has made my mood foul since then. However, I remind myself that there are people with single digit scores who are worse than me.

Symptom 3: People suffering from the egonerd syndrome tend to look for people who scored badly to boost their unstable self-esteem.

I was doing a take-home quiz and checked my answers with my friend. I was particularly sure of most of my answers that I took effort to find out and dismissed my friend's different answer as wrong.

Symptom 4: People suffering from the egonerd syndrome are self-righteous about their academic work and despise those who had different answers that they think are wrong.

Conclusion: People suffering from the egonerd syndrome are basically egoistical nerds who are self-righteous, disgusting and are obsessed with getting high academic grades.

Am I suffering from the egonerd syndrome? Am I this disgusting? Why would scoring high in a silly test matter to anyone. It eventually means nothing and no one will remember it.

Emphasis should be placed on more important things like understanding people, reciprocating smiles and listening to stories of joys and woe. There is no need to get too uptight about grades. Rather, live frivolously and succulently and you will find that it means much more than a silly grade for your intellectual ability.

Understand people. Why do nerds love to study so much? Why do they take pride in doing better than other people? Here is a little insight:

Once there was a man who made metal balls. His metal balls are the best in the world. They are the roundest and the weight is equivalently spread out throughout the ball. No one could make better metal balls than him.

Nevermind that he is ugly, poor, unathletic, useless and has no friends. He still makes the best metal balls in the world. Metal balls are his life and he constantly maintains and improves his skill in making metal balls.

Then one day, the king came and declared that there is someone else who made better metal balls than him. This usually reserved and quiet man turned mad and threw his metal ball at the king and killed him.

The moral of the story is: Don't just make metal balls, make metal forks, spoons, knives, plates, pots and pans too.