Confidence...

In the grand scheme of things, I've had a pretty healthy upbringing. Sure, like most smart kids, I was loved by some and hated by others. I was usually near the bottom when it came to sports ability throughout middle school, and there were some people who ridiculed me for my physical makeup.

I remember having to write an essay about myself, back when I was in 4th grade. When it came time to describe what I looked like, I wrote, "I'm a pretty average-looking kid." My teacher crossed it out and corrected with "I am short and fat".

I went through a crisis of identity around 6th grade. The pressure was on to make it into a good secondary school, so I was no longer allowed to coast through getting As in English, Zs in Chinese dictation, and an assortment of As and Bs in everything else. Now, it was a matter of getting As across the board, and going from being 50ish out of 300 students to being in the top 10.

It was a weird time. I remember days when I felt terrible because I couldn't say I was great at anything. Seemed I was always just "good", and somebody else would get the top spot. For a long time, I wanted to just know that I was the best at something, to have an identity in something. Over time, I conceded that there was no shame in being pretty darn good at a lot of things, and started living up to it. But there's still a part of me that wants to be known for something specific. Perhaps it's just a desire to be special, to stand out from the crowd.

Up till that point, I think the only thing I could securely say I was dominant at was English. Never got anything less than a solid A in it. People sometimes ridiculed me for having an American accent, but I always knew that the scores would vindicate me, so I didn't take much offense at it. I perhaps even delighted a bit at being able to prove everybody wrong.

But there was a problem with growing up this way. I was the only American in a school where English was a second language for everybody else. I had an unfair advantage. So no matter how well I did, I had this lingering feeling that I was sandbagging, and I wouldn't hold up in a fair competition.

Well, come 7th and 8th grade, they held some inter-school competitions administered by the University of New South Wales. Apparently, it was a way of benchmarking students from different schools against a standardized test. I ended up not only getting a perfect score on the English test, but acing the math and science ones, as well, which let me take home the best performer in school award and stand up on a podium and get my photo in the local paper. That year, I also ended up winning a district-wide English-Chinese translation contest. The guy who gave me my award was named Bruce Lee. It was kind of a funny affair, too--I hadn't actually wanted to enter the competition when it was announced, but since there were other people in the class who thought I should enter, I told the kid in front of me to raise my hand for me if he really thought so strongly about me. He did.

I was feeling pretty good about myself. Those two years, I also managed to push my way up to ranking #3 out of 200+ students by mid-term. The kid who got #1 was kind of obnoxious, so I didn't think highly enough of him to be jealous. It felt good, though...fellow students were congratulating me and while rivalries in the class still existed, they were friendly.

The basketball and soccer courts was a different matter. There, kids were as vicious and belittling as could be. I don't think I ever had a very good experience there...always felt like I was either the laggard or the object of ridicule. I remember having a great sky hook, until one day somebody started making fun of it. Afterwards, I couldn't pull it off anymore, and had to learn a regular jump shot. There were one or two people who were particularly merciless in calling me the fat one. It's taken time to realize how much of that viciousness was to compensate for their own inadequacy, but their words still hurt.

Playing with friends was different. I was still out of shape compared to them, but I held my own. We laughed a lot on the courts. For some odd reason, though, I always held a lingering suspicion that they were sandbagging and letting me win. I wonder if there's something about me that's just fundamentally doubtful of my ability to perform beyond what people tell me I am.

High school sports were terrible. As the new kid in school who'd had to completely cut ties to old friends for the time (long story), I was already having a hard enough time adjusting. But all of the people I'd treated as friends in those early days...I eventually became their object of ridicule, their pariah.

Somewhere around that time, I stopped being an extrovert. I don't know if it was because I no longer trusted the kids around me, or because my eventual friendship circle consisted of people far more charismatic than I was. I just stopped being rambunctious, stopped being a dominant personality.

Around that time, I also got into trouble with a parent for pulling a Feynman--speaking my mind in a manner that undermined the prevailing opinion--and got chewed out for it. I still speak my mind, but I wonder nowadays if you could put me back in my 7th grade classroom and still expect me to correct my teachers on the spot whenever they said something wrong the way I did then. I'm a little bit afraid that I've turned into one of those people who remains silent out of tact...too silent to actually question things that don't feel right on impulse anymore.

One thing that puzzles me about American culture is how a complete stranger can enter a conversational circle, cut off the entire ongoing conversation and start something new. I've always done things differently, trying to slip my way into the existing conversation instead and find out what people are talking about. I suspect that I consequently hold a lot less control over where the conversation goes, and appear a lot meeker nowadays.

High school was a weird time. I continued to do well, but it always felt like there was a bar that people were hoping I could hit. Make National Honors Society as a sophomore. Win that Science award that I apparently deserved. Get recognized for how well I was doing for the school. It all seemed kind of surreal. I would go out, do my best and get superb scores. Then somebody else would get the recognition prize, which seemed to upset my parents a lot more than it did me.

Oh, high school...in retrospect, I think I did end up falling victim to the whole college pressure problems. Because I was so close to the school grapevine, I always knew where I stood relative to other people, grade-wise, and learned to be conscious about it. I wish I hadn't. I ended up benchmarking myself relative to where they were, and couldn't feel comfortable anymore in knowing that I'd done a job well unless I knew how everybody else had done, too.

To this day, I abhor people who ask you for your scores, then playfully say "I hate you" when they find out. They always believe they don't mean it, that it's just a backhanded compliment. But there is always, always a tinge of real jealousy behind their words. I never picked up that habit. I'm glad I didn't.

I haven't completely shaken off the imprints that these events have made on me; I still have trouble accepting compliments without knowing the benchmarks, I still feel, sometimes, like I'm only dominant because I'm sandbagging. I wonder if that kid inside of me has lost his instinctive chutzpah and become far more likely to think than to talk. And I wonder if I can or should address these personality changes.

I find that I love the sound of my singing...unless I'm hearing it back on tape. I like the way I look in the mirror, but not in most photographs. I used to be overconfident in most endeavors, until I was told I was overconfident and to be a bit skeptical about how good I really was, lest I fail come results time. I fear I'm too far on the other side of the spectrum right now, and need to come back to the middle.

...How will I go back to the simple pleasure of finding things out?