and not the kind of 'stand in front of numerous people and speak' kind of self-confidence, since i did that with jo for IVP (omg terrible court shoes experience) and with ying for GEP open house and almost everyday in 08/09 even though thirteeners mostly have ADHD. oh and with the byte-ers too, who don't exactly listen to you but just stare at their screen. and smoking my way through poster presentations with zinc and jen for SMP/SSEF.
see, this is me convincing myself that i can actually do it by recalling past experiences of doing so. but if anyone asked me to do anything right now i'd probably turn them down and say i'm not capable of it.
no matter what happens, i'll never think that i have the ability to do it even though i actually might. i still remember the first thing tambb said to me was "eh you can be ct rep!" in the same tone that she says "eh you must do a z-test!" and i told her no in the same way i told tanny no in sec 2 that i didn't want to be monitor because i'd probably do a bad job. the difference was that tanny insisted and convinced me to try while in hc if you say no then other ppl will gladly grab the opportunity. (not that i regret it, i don't think i would have made a good ct rep anyway)
basically, the point is that i don't have much faith in myself, and hence i don't really get very competitive since i don't think i have a chance anyway. and i am terrible at selling myself. and this does not bode well for my future, oh dear. future being the not very distant one of unis and scholarships.
i guess my life has been a really really lucky one, because one good thing has led to another. getting into GEP opened a damn lot of doors, i kid you not. and joining infocomm in taonan by chance, winning some nanyang IT comp which led to me DSA-ing into nanyang even though my chinese is as proficient as a squirrel's. and omg nanyang. because of GEP we did IVP, and jo, marshy and i got to wear the silly banana suit and present our weird pseudo curtain rod idea (basically some weird metal grill and fishing reel mashup prototype which was annoying ttm). then i did FPS with ying, queenie and nic and the reason why i am so anal today is because i've had to identify 100+ problems for god knows how many scenarios. oh and because i had to do minutes for mrs teng and she was rather umm... particular about details. and smp in sec 4 was a "zinc and jen came up to me and asked me if i wanted to do with them so i was like "sure with a smiley face"" and chem olympiad was a "since you can qualify might as well go" and infocomm exco was a senior nominations thing.
in the end, i'm lucky to have met people who apparently saw things in me that i never saw in myself. (lol i suddenly feel vaguely uncomfortable, too literal oops) and all this luck kinda carried on in JC, like for chem mrs cheng expected a lot from me because i had been in chem o (even though i failed it quite epicly, like 15/40 or sth) and even for ultimate i'd never have even considered the possibility of playing handler (not that i'm even barely decent) if jack hadn't made me do it at end of J1.
this is why i react so badly to expectations, because they actually push me to fulfill them/realise some potential that i somehow always seem to have, annoying. which means that i must be a natural slacker and underachiever. zzz me sloth *growls*
the flipside of this is that if someone doesn't know you, they won't offer you these opportunities. you have to convince them that you're worthy of if but if i don't think i deserve something, how am i going to convince you? and i just don't have that drive to do all sorts of things, freak i don't even check SMB. and if i have any more acronyms in this post i might have to start a footnote zzz pw. omg another self-fulfilling expectation but nvm, this post is too long and i want to sleep soon so i can wake up and go shopping tmr with my mummy and sis n.n
oh i have another flipside though, before i end. ok so my coin has 3 sides, doesnt that boggle your mind? teehee ;) yeah, the worst thing is that when ppl tell me i can't do something, i believe them. recall earlier epiphany about lacking confidence. right now my parents don't think i can get into vet med, and no matter how hard i tell myself not to freak out and give up, there's that little part of me (which is still quite large considering how i'm not very little to start with) that agrees with them and i foresee myself doing some general degree which i won't really mind actually since i've yet to find anything that i truly dislike. it's all just a matter of how much i enjoy sth and working with animals happens to be what i enjoy the most.
point is, i am where i am purely based on luck, because if everyone in my life had told me that i was doomed i really would have just given up and gone to be a road sweeper. or if no one had pushed me then i would have just turned into a rock (that reads lots of fanfiction and random books).
which is totally not a hasty conclusion or some other fallacy (ive never been good at figuring them out), because if you compare my grades from ny (where trs are like your good friends and they talk to you and encourage you) and hc (where you only see trs in classes, since rocks like me don't arrange consults), i've really been underperforming. zzz underachieving. (read: lazy) i mean, i even managed to get an A for higher chinese with my squirrel-level proficiency because chenlaoshi said i could.
freak, i really am the product of other people's expectations. this really says a lot about me, or rather the lack of things to say about me, since i seem to be lacking a personality. eeks, identity crisis approaching. time to cut off this mega long muse, tata.
