Regaining confidence, one step at a time
Small fish in a big pond
“MIT makes you look down on yourself so much, which makes me feel like it was not worth going to this school,” my mom texted in the family group chat a month ago. “This place destroyed your self-confidence and gave you too much pressure.”
My mom texted this after I confessed feeling imposter syndrome at MIT. I was livid when I saw her text. I wanted to counter her statement by saying that going to MIT was worth it and overall positive, but I didn’t know how to respond at the moment. The next morning, I fired back in the group chat, saying “Ok enough my self-confidence would have been destroyed at Stanford.”
In hindsight, what my mom said wasn’t wrong. She had a point. I like to think of MIT as the place that made me become more resilient and comfortable with failure. I must admit, however, that being a small fish in a big pond here has made me lose so much self-confidence that I am not sure how long it will take me to regain confidence after I graduate.
What made my self-confidence reach an all-time low in my MIT career was that senior fall was my worst semester academically. In one of my classes, I struggled so much on the exams and problem sets that I worried about failing the class. In another class, my midterm grade dropped significantly from the first to second midterm; it was unlike anything I experienced before. These series of events made me wonder if this semester was just an unfortunate one, or that my next semester was doomed to experience the same fate.
It wasn’t until last semester that I realized how important it was to have self-confidence. In high school, I knew that I had some issues with self-confidence, but it was nowhere as bad as now. My academic performance might have been similar regardless, but I am sure that my low self-confidence made things worse. Worse in the sense that I had a hard time overcoming setbacks and struggled with motivation. How I viewed myself also affected my mental health, as I felt depressed and hopeless at times about my academic situation.
My low self-confidence made me feel so drained at the end of the year that I came to this dark realization: no one else can help me become more confident except myself. In other words, I need to learn how to become best friends with myself. If I don’t change, the internalized thoughts I have can affect my mindset and actions, so much that it can change my future outcomes, for better or for worse. Therefore, it is critical for me to have a basic level of confidence.
Although my family and friends can say positive things about me, it’s how I perceive myself that shapes my self-confidence in the end. On a similar note, I can acquire more accolades and achievements that would make me feel better, but that wouldn’t necessarily help me gain self-confidence in the long run.
As a result, one question I had throughout last semester was “how do I regain confidence?” Unfortunately, I never came closer to an answer by the end. I tried to find confidence from my strengths outside of academics, like running long distances and writing articles that my friends enjoyed reading. But I would always retort these thoughts by saying that no one in graduate school or the corporate world cares about these aspects of me, because they are not directly related to my career or academics.
Perhaps it is being in the MIT bubble that makes finding self-confidence so hard. As a small fish in a big pond, I constantly compare myself with others, even though it obviously doesn’t do much good to me. But it is hard to not compare myself when I am surrounded by people who are one of the best scientists and engineers in the country and world.
Sometimes, I remind myself that the student body at MIT is not representative of the average population, but that barely reassures me. Most of the time, I ignore that fact, and return to feeling bad about being below average academically at MIT.
It’s as if the only things that would give me self-confidence are factors that would validate my intelligence and competency, traits that are emphasized a lot not only at MIT, but in the job market. This narrow mindset bothered me a lot, but I struggled to truly seek confidence from other things. The question occupied my mind throughout winter break, causing me to make regaining confidence one of my New Year’s resolutions.
When I wrote out this New Year’s resolution in my YearCompass booklet [1], I was aware that sticking to this resolution would require changing the way I talked to myself subconsciously, which is a significant undertaking. Logically speaking, practicing self-compassion should be easy, yet it is so hard. I read articles online about how to be more confident, but they didn’t really feel helpful or insightful.
What made me feel closer to answering this big question of regaining confidence during winter break was when I chose to run right after I woke up, as I didn’t have time in the afternoon for running. Being at home made me return to an earlier sleep schedule, and I naturally woke up before 8 a.m. that day. As I ran, I felt happy about starting the day with a 5k run because this choice required exerting some self-discipline, a trait that I admittedly lacked at times during the fall semester. The last time I decided to run in the morning out of choice had been in late August.
As I ran back to my house, I realized that one way to increase my confidence is to develop and maintain strong habits. One of the main sources of unhappiness last semester was the dreadful feeling that my academic success was out of my control because the hours I was putting in did not correlate with promising results. Although I worked hard in my classes, in hindsight I had some room for improvement in terms of study and learning habits. Building good habits like time management and focus is a choice I can make and can be achieved if I am determined and proactive.
Spring semester may not be easier, but one thing that is under my control is whether I want to develop good habits. By developing better habits in academics and life, I have confidence that these changes will indirectly translate to more self-confidence.
[1] YearCompass is a free exercise booklet that makes you reflect on the past year and plan for the next year.