So, I finally, during my session with Nancy, emailed the professor I've been wanting to talk with about things to ask for a meeting.  And I'm feeling really really anxious about her response and everything.

I was told to write out my feelings and validate them while also challenging them so...I'm gonna do that here and stuff I guess.

This professor is an incredibly intelligent person, and I'm afraid her expectations of me are too high, especially given how I have been for the past two semesters.  I find that she often looks to me when dealing with math stuff in classes, and she'll sometimes I think believe that I am more capable than I feel I am.  And I sometimes find her difficult to understand; she words things in a way that I don't always get and when I don't, I don't have the courage to ask her to break things down more.  I'm supposed to be the math person, and I don't like and am afraid of having one of the more methodological and mathematically intelligent people in this department thinking that I actually suck.  Which I feel like I do.

(Challenging these thoughts is harder than this entry will make them seem, aha.)  However, the meeting could actually go really well.  Instead of her being angry with me about not contacting her earlier, she might be glad that I finally took that step I was anxious about taking.  I also need to remember that she has had many more years than I do develop her mathematical skills and expertise; she was, at some point in her earlier life, where I am now.  The fact that she is better than I am in terms of abilities does not mean she is going to think of me as stupid or who can't handle things in the methodological pool.  And my asking questions might be interpreted not as me being unintelligent and unable to handle these sorts of but more that I want to learn and make sure I understand as much as possible so that I can do better.

I have been trained in certain areas of math, and just because I have been somewhat removed from pure mathematics in my time here does not mean that my skills have disappeared.  Rather, they lie dormant, perhaps.  It would make sense, since I haven't needed to use them, and so haven't sharpened those skills in a while.  Being out of practice does not automatically mean I have failed and that I cannot get those skills back.

Right now, yes, I feel like things are going to be terrible.  I'm fidgety and a little shaken but it is okay.  I took a step, and right now, that step is a leap, and should be acknowledged as such.

Things won't be as bad as they seem right now.