ben ben benko blog

Smartass to idiot in 1 day flat

In high school I was smart. I knew what I was doing and I had confidence in my intelligence. I wasn't a perfect student by any means. I didn't give a speech at graduation, but I could have. I knew at the time and still today I believe that if I had wanted to I could have had a 4.0 GPA. I was just a bit lazy and I was much more interested in TV than textbooks. I did enough to get by and to get into decent colleges. I was never great at taking tests but my standard stupid mistakes here and there could have been overcome if I had set my mind to it. This I'm sure of.

Then I arrived at college. Suddenly I was surrounded by all of the people who did try a little harder and did end up on that stage at graduation, many without having to try very hard. Suddenly my professors had turned into Charlie Brown's teacher and I actually had to study. Of course I hadn't really developed good study habits in high school so I still was doing basically only what it took to get by. I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point my confidence took a nose dive (It was probably in Engineering 1. Damn 4 Tran!) . I started to loathe people who would complain about getting a 92% on an exam. In high school I was that person now I wanted to poke their eyes out. Luckily I studied Architecture. With each passing year of college I had fewer and fewer exams and more and more projects. With projects it became clear that if I put in enough time and sought the guidance of my professors there was no way to fail or at least no way to make stupid mistakes that I could beat myself up over. My slightly perfectionist nature could be harnessed into attention to detail instead of self loathing over a missed spelling or a carried 2.

It took a long time, but eventually my confidence started to come back. I started to remember what it felt like to think I was smart and to have faith in my ideas. I remembered that I actually could achieve the things I wanted to.

When I started Croatian classes my old confidence was fully restored. I knew a few things that others didn't. I had a better handle on Zagreb and Croatian culture than most, and my pronunciation was clearly the best in the class. I also had lost my fear of being labeled a nerd and I spoke up frequently in class with questions and comments. I appeared to be a top student. And I must admit that it felt great. Maybe a little too great.

On Monday we had our first exam. I didn't study all that much. Neither did anyone else. I took the exam and felt confident. A few hours later I realized I had probably screwed up a whole section. The next day I found that in fact I was right and in addition to that I had made a handful of outrageously stupid mistakes. I had even taken the time to read back through my exam after finishing and still I didn't catch any of these things. It took less than 24 hours for that black pit in the bottom of my stomach to open up and try to swallow me whole. It was a familiar feeling but not one I had expected to feel again. It was a feeling that had been easy to forget about but like a bad dream that you can't remember when you wake up it suddenly popped back into my mind and has been haunting me since. I guess that injury to my confidence all those years ago left a scar I hadn't noticed before. I'm getting over it, but I notice I'm not quite as likely to speak up in class when I think I know something. Others are catching up to my level and quickly exceeding it. I've re-learned a valuable lesson. Over confidence is a pretty dangerous thing to indulge in. I still think I'm doing well in this class and have the potential to do really well and learn a lot, but I will actually have to study. Imagine that!

posted by Liz @ 8:55 AM