Superlative

"The world tells you that to be more confident you have to be more than others in some way - that you need to have more things, more talent, more intelligence, more popularity.  This is simply not true.  That is counterfeit confidence." 

College for me, if it had to be one life lesson, is that I am not the best at anything.  Absolutely nothing.  There is not a thing that I have done that someone else hasn't done better.  And that is good too.  I used to think I deserved to be the best at something.  That I earned it somehow.  That there was something in me that was inherently better.  I used to take pride in being the smartest person in a room.  Or in being the tallest.  Or having the best hair.  Or in having written the best paper.  Or figured something out the fastest.  Or in having the ability to shove the most information into my brain, only to let it all spill back out in a test.

I haven't fully learned the lesson.  Part of me still likes it when I find myself the -est in a room.  But my freshman year, I learned quickly, that I could try really hard and still not be the best.  I was not the nicest, the smartest, the hardest working, the most unique, and at first it was okay, then it was discouraging, and then I hated it.  But over time, I am trying to learn, that not being the best in the room does not mean that I am not good.  Standing next to a model in a picture doesn't make me uglier. In fact, standing next to happy people usually just makes me happier.


Oh there are so many things I am bad at.  There are also a very few little things I am not terrible at, and I'm going to try and do those things over and over again until I die.  And I am going to try and add more things to that tiny little list of things.




Oh to be college.