Hey all,

I'm sorry to come venting and being altogether a little nuts right now. It's the middle of the night and I am almost too terrified to go to work in the morning. I really feel like I want to self harm although I haven't done so in years.

I'll try to keep this brief, but I have been having a string of utterly rotten luck at work for the past few months. I am 28 and moved to a new state on my own a little over a year ago. I got a new job which is absolutely AMAZING, my coworkers are funny and smart, my boss and bosses boss are both incredibly supportive and genuinely want to help me achieve my personal goals by tailoring my job around my skills and interests. I work at a University with graduate students, assisting them with applications, enrollment, and graduation. My boss has noticed my skills in graphic design and is actively working to get me a title change and pay bump to do more of those things. I had my 1 year review in mid June and it was stellar. There were basically no negative comments on my performance or behavior.

Literally, and I mean *exactly* one week after my performance review, big big mistakes that I made started popping up. Things that happened a month or two before that nobody noticed until just then, but had some pretty nasty consequences. Nothing that couldn't be fixed, but still not good. For instance, I had forgotten to collect one of the transcripts for a student who was accepted into one of our programs, and one day we realized a student who submitted their application for graduation was not on the list of students ready to graduate. That particular instance lead to our department almost being charged a $35 fee (and we're grant funded, so we're always pretty strapped for cash.) These mistakes *just. keep. coming up.* 

I have accepted full responsibility each time one of these things has happened, pulled all data I had on the issue, identified what I did wrong, and made a concerted effort to improve and not do it again. This is REALLY DAMN HARD for me because I just want to quit because I feel like I'm not good enough and the department would be so much better without me there. Also I completely crumble when being criticized, so there's that.

Yesterday, something *really bad* happened. I missed a vital step in the graduation application process. I forgot to check if a student had reached the credit requirement to graduate. I submitted the finalized paperwork, everything was good to go, then the graduate office noticed that the student was 4 credits short. That is a HUGE DEAL. Their office wound up charging our department $220 to put a full stop and cancel the graduation application (I don't know why it was that much, but it was.) My boss called me in and told me that this was very serious. Obviously we could fix it, but these things just keep happening and each time it's worse than the last. She also told me that she thinks I'm an excellent employee, but is worrying that she falsified my annual review because she was looking at me through rose-colored glasses. 

I burst into tears. I am so embarrassed. I know that I can do a good job, I *was* doing a good job! And I have NO IDEA what happened. I left to go on a short walk after that because I was considering doing some ridiculously inappropriate stuff to try to make up for this grievance, like (and I'm serious here) I had very persistent thoughts that I needed to offer to lick the office carpet clean to prove that I was sorry. After I calmed down, I wrote a formal apology to my boss and her boss explaining what the issue was and what I will do differently.

Cool, alright, y'all still with me? I'm sorry this is longer than I thought.

ANYWAY. That brings us to today. About a month ago I realized that I had dropped the ball on yet another student's graduation application. I had accidentally marked it as "read" when in fact I had not read it. When I found out, it was well past the due date, even for a fee. I was so flustered after the first grad app ball-drop that I didn't tell anyone that I had found this mistake. I just marked her as applying to graduate in the Fall instead of the Summer, saved her application, and moved on. Today she emails me asking if she is all set to graduate in the Summer. Cue FUCKING PANICKING! I don't want my boss to find out because I am convinced (illogically) that she HATES me and will end me over this. I emailed the student explaining that due to my error I lost her email and caught it after the deadline has passed. I apologized and said that I have her on track to graduate in the fall, and to let me know if she has any questions or concerns. I haven't heard back yet.

Now I am spiraling *H A R D* and having panic attacks on and off because what if this is REALLY NOT OKAY and I DESTROYED SOMEONE'S FUTURE and I didn't tell anyone which made it worse and I am the worst person in the world and want to quit my job and move into the Canadian wilderness and become a lumberjack and never speak to anyone again.

....Anyone have any advice? Am I being totally irrational? Help??