Beginning to Believe Myself Again

I may not have told you but I certainly feel guilty and at the same time insecured with one of my classes this semester. The reasons? Oh, I got a bunch of very articulate classmates and my course adviser is a seasoned Harvard graduate, and I feel I am not giving it all my best in the class.

Because of this bug, as preparation for our oral report, I read to death some books for a week. And because we were only given fifteen minutes for the oral presentation, I had to condense all the important concepts with ten slides to contain the most important concepts to beat the allotted time! And then had to get acquainted with the deep concepts with their jargons that bordered to the classical psychology.

When I presented, I brought with my hands my security blanket, my "codigo", that contains it all. But when I began talking, I never needed to take a peep into the note and my thoughts just came out my mouth smoothly. At the end of the presentations, I was given the highest score. I cannot believe that I read over and over again the positive comments in our score sheet.

We also have critique papers every month. We already had four critique papers in the course and I never got the chance to be called as highest scorer, which quietly frustrated me. I usually critique the research organization of the article then its epistemic conceptualization. Although I got brownie points, there were times when I doubted myself if I am making sense with what I write because I never get the highest.

The last two journal articles we had to critique were obviously as difficult as pulling out an impacted molar. I swear when I say I had to read them each for about ten times. The one was about cognitive task strategies in problem solving with neurological brain records. The statistical tools used were very complex that I had to study other sources. The other article was about relationship of language skills to comprehension and how these interrelationships are affected by the writing systems. The difficult part was understanding the peculiar nature of Chinese in terms of its writing system.

For the past critique papers, I challenged myself silently to top the class. When the last critique paper was to be returned, I got the highest score - a perfect one. Our course adviser especially mentioned that she admired my illustration of the variables in the diagram as a cognitive guide in understanding the research article. Other than that, I especially feel that my advantage also is my critique on the statistical tools of the study because I am quite familiar with meta analysis.

Results not for bragging but for appreciation.

I don't want to sound one big braggart, and I doubt and ask myself: Am I just one lucky dog for these? But a part of me convinces me that other than sheer luck, it must have been determination, effort and time. So, without guilt and insecurity, this is me... beginning to believe myself again.