Hey there....I aint gonna thank you for the flashback, cause I sure as hell didn't enjoy it. But boy oh boy do I know where you are and what you're talking about.

I'm not going to say anything to take away from what you're feeling right now, and I'm certainly not going to say something that implies that you're feeling one fraction less shitty than I was when I failed to do well in my first year of grad school. There were reasons, there were medical things going on behind the scenes, my advisor seriously dropped the ball and didn't give me the background info I needed....but basically, I screwed up and did I really half assed job on something that mattered. And I questioned whether I should be allowed to do anything else. 'Cause no matter how I cut it, I thought I could have done better.....and although I didn't realize it at the time, I was MORE disappointed in myself than my boss was in me.

But here's the thing. Years later, looking back on it, I was coping with a lot of other crap. Yes, I could have done better...if I had it to do over again TODAY, as the person I am now. Then, as the person I was, I couldn't. Today, I'd recognize sooner that I was in the weeds, I'd know how and whom to ask for help. And those are lessons I could only have learned BY screwing it up the first time. If you want to appologise to your bosses, do that. It may or may not make you feel better. But if you want to pay them back for the work they're about to put in to pull you out of trouble....take a deep breath, and LEARN from this. If you do nothing, crawl back into your shell, lower your sites, and give up on yourself.....you fail yourself. If you learn from this that failure sucks but doesn't kill, that people are human...and you should give them some slack when they fail you in turn, and that everyone benefits if you're honest about what you can do and adult enough to ask for help when you can't cope with what you've taken on......well.....then you MORE than anyone else should keep going on your path. Cause if you do all that, you'll never ever feel this bad again.

Sorry it's crappy, do please stick with it though. The people who should quit are the ones who would be making excuses right now, instead of giving themselves a kick in the ass.

G