Guilt

During the fourth week of class, Dr. Otto presented the images from Corkscrew in a PowerPoint presentation.  Thank the Lord Almighty that the picture part of the field trip wasn't graded, or else I would have been screwed.  As Dr. Otto went through all the pictures, and each person talked a little about what the picture was about, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty.  See, I take pride in my school work since school is the one place I can undoubtedly succeed in at all times.  Getting good grades and turning in assignments on time is also something that my mother instilled in me as a child; she expected that me and my sister always bring home good grades.  Even after she passed away, I felt like I had to succeed academically otherwise I would be disappointing her somehow.  So, the fact that I seemed to be the only student in the class that wasn't able to make the field trip made me feel like I had failed.  Even the students whom hadn't made the field trip with Dr. Otto seemed to have jump ship with another teacher's Corkscrew field trip, to which further deepened my guilt since I wasn't able to make that field trip either because of my schedule.  Yeah, the entire experience was not fun to me.

On the bright side though, I was able to see and learn about all of the cool flora and fauna that would be awaiting me when I finally made it to Corkscrew.  Probably the most memorable picture I saw was the picture of scat one of the students found on the trail.  It was disgusting and fascinating all at once, and it made me laugh to see the nasty thing.  Ironically, the light mood that over took the class because of the picture brightened up my day a bit.  The distraction did me some good, and I'm very thankful for that.