#tldr im emotional but my professor believes in me

[milkteamarx]

So all in all, I need to learn not to take things so personally.

I’m gonna be ranting a bit about my class and how I sort of.. get emotional and frustrated really easily. Also about taking on responsibility and realizing when you need to become a leader. 

So last night I had my advanced crime scene course, which is essentially the capstone for the entire degree. We are investigating a missing persons case all semester and the class is split into two groups. My group has 4 girls, the other group has 5 girls. Last night, we knew we were going to be going out and collecting evidence around a suspicious car that may be connected to the disappearance of our victim. So our two groups go out and there were two cars set up for us that way we weren’t attempting to process the same car. The other group apparently got done with their car really fast, which we had no way of knowing considering they were in different parking lots. So we’re out on the scene and I was taking the crime scene photos because I know that’s something I excel at. Our fourth girl said she was going to be late and ended up being 45 minutes late. So I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were out there for like an hour. I took the photos, and the second girl was supposed to be swabbing the “suspected” blood on the car. There were two blood spatter marks, one on the bumper, on below the bumper, and a small droplet a little ways away. So that’s three swabs we needed to do... Tell me how I took all of the crime scene photos and also took two of the three swabs? Like what was going on, why did I feel like I was doing everything? Anyway my professor comes out and asks us what the hell is taking so long and I try to tell him that our group has 3 girls and the other group has 5 and we’re doing what we have to. And like I was taught by him that it’s better to be thorough than be quick and forget something. And literally no one in my group was speaking up after he asked us what we were still doing out here, so I had to be the one to speak up and talk to him. And like I feel like I do this so so so often in this class. But anyway, me and him start talking and he says “It doesn’t matter that you have 3 people, this should’ve only taken you 30 minutes max. Stop making excuses, do your shit (Since it’s an advanced class, we’re very informal), and get on with it” and I just got frustrated. Frustrated that my group was letting me take the heat, frustrated that our fourth girl was 45 minutes late, just frustrated in general. So then he calls me out again and is like “Don’t get pissed off, Devon” and I told him I wasn’t and he said I was and that he can tell. So after that I just sort of shut up and just tried to breathe. Anyway, last night I was really being hard on myself because I shouldn’t allow myself to get so emotional. I felt like he thought I was incompetent after that because if i’m getting emotional about this than how am I going to be in my actual field? But anyway, I come into class today (A different class, but I still had the same professor), and he’s joking around with everyone. He starts handing out this paper that we need and when he gets to me, he jokes and says “feeling a little better today?”. I felt so much better and told him yeah, I just got frustrated. He literally said “I was so hard on you because I know you’re good at what you do and I know out of everyone in the group, you’re the one that needs to delegate tasks. Don’t take it personally, i’m testing you because I know you’re good” and like alskfjhasfhj I feel so much better. I feel SO SO much better, knowing that he’s not writing me off. A big part of this class and this degree program is the fact that he’s an active Sargent with the police department and not only will he write a few people recommendation letters for a crime scene job, but he’ll be the one you work with and it’s just... important for him to believe in me and think i’m capable. So yeah, sick.