Confidence

Well its been a while since I last blogged something meaningful and since I would rather put off my veterinary school application essays a little bit longer I thought I would discuss the very relevant albeit very long topic of confidence.

Confidence is such a broad term that can be used in so many ways and is one of those terms that is extremely dependent on context.  Because of this I thought it might be easier to write about it disjointly under separate titles: Dating, Applications, and The catch 22.  All of these titles deal with the theme of self confidence, but in different ways.  So here it goes.

Dating
I know we've all heard it before but because of author's privilege I'm going to write it here (don't like it?  Read someone else's blog!).  Both girls and guys find confidence sexy. Period.  With that being said, there is also a balance to it.  Overconfidence is easily mistaken for arrogance which is of course not as desirable when looking for a potential mate.  However personal experience (keep in mind I am a girl and this may not be true with guys) has showed me that over confidence is easier to overcome then shyness.  A good example of this is with my recent ex-boyfriend; a physicist who, as he puts it, is an exceptional person just trying to live an exceptional life.  This guy is brilliant in his own right, but even if he wasn't you would not be able to tell purely because of the level of confidence he has in himself.  It amazes me just how much I was attracted to that single trait in him.  But it shouldn't surprise me because on a more primal level it makes sense that confidence is sexy.  Females of almost any species are programmed want to mate with the male who will make the best offspring (and when I say the best I mean most likely to survive) and so when a guy is confident about himself, he is able to show the girl in question that he is a capable man and will make good babies.  This is exactly what he did; his confidence in himself proved to me that he was a capable, useful person - something I highly respect in a person.  And so, again, it shouldn't be so hard to believe that I would fall so hard for this guy.  The reverse, I imagine, would also be true for the fact that then it is the female proving to the male that she will not only make good babies but is strong enough to take care of them.  Its funny how things like attraction can be boiled down to such simple Darwinian concepts but it remains true nonetheless.  From my example I would like you to take away that confidence is sexy because it implicitly tells the other person Hey I'm Awesome!. And so even if you are not little miss/mr. extrovert, a little confidence can go a long way when attracting a mate.

Applications
Now this part of the discussion is extremely relevant to me because its one of the struggles that I have had to overcome through most of the influential parts of my life.  Applications for anything: scholarships, school applications, job applications...etc require the kind of self confidence that tells others that you are capable of doing [insert something here].  Unfortunately no application seems to ask that directly.  They instead ask about personality traits and other such things that force a person to throw humility to the wind and, as they say, tute their own horn.  While there are those who do not have those desirable personality traits (I'm not going to go into that just because its not relevant) many very worthy and wonderful people do have those traits but, like me, are not always able to express that due to lack of self confidence.  Frankly, I think that is unfair that those who are unable to express their talents due to extreme humility or crushed self confidence should be written off as a less desirable candidate.  Not only are the evaluators missing out on potential excellence they are also being insensitive to the trials that someone could have potentially gone through (this I will mention in the catch 22).  Despite my stance on that, I can see why the system is set up the way it is.  It is for the same reason as the dating situation just instead of impressing the mate, you're impressing someone that you are capable of doing [insert here].  To put this in more primal terms, you're trying to convince the pack leader that you are strong enough to join the hunt and not cause the rest of your pack to starve because you couldn't stab the woolly mammoth.  In my situation I'm telling veterinary schools that I am adequately prepared as well as possess the right characteristics for their hard as all hell program and that I won't drop out within the first few weeks of school.  To others applying for a job, you're merely trying to say hey, I want to work here, and I'll work really hard so that you'll make lots of money.  Its all so simple, and yet not...which leads me to the last topic...

The Catch 22
I called this section the catch 22 because through most of this post I've been stressing how confidence is really important in both love and work but while a healthy dose of confidence is generally positive, its something that few people have in abundance.  Some can even have none at all which can have devastating effects in all aspects of person's life.  Victims of emotional (or just about any other kind) abuse are a good example here.  Say that someone was in an emotionally abusive relationship either with a spouse or a family member that completely shattered their confidence in themselves.  Exactly how is that person ever supposed to let their talents shine if they can't even see their talents?  Its like putting a blind person room of beautiful paintings, while the paintings are breathtaking, the blind person can't remark on them because they are unable to see them.  After awhile the blind person might even forget that the paintings are there at all.  There are so many, myself included, which have been that blind person in a room full of beautiful paintings.  And what are we supposed to do? Make something up?  Because the blind person can't see, if they were forced to remark on it then for all they know they could just be making something up, which if you bring that back to the real life situation, would equate to lying (making it then an ethical dilemma which makes it that much more complicated)   It is hard enough to write truthfully and eloquently, let alone writing eloquently on something that you are unable to see/acknowledge.  This is what has made writing applications for anything extraordinarily difficult and where I find myself at a disadvantage.  So while confidence is important, sometimes you can't reasonably expect that from a person either because they don't have any or because they lost it.  Thus, the catch 22.


Luckily many years of success and the love and respect of others (my friends and family) has allowed me to finally be able to see some of my beautiful paintings.  I feel blessed in a way because it really couldn't have come at a more crucial time. I am applying for veterinary school and I'm required to say exactly how I would make the best applicant for veterinary school and if I didn't have the self confidence that I do now, my application would be exponentially weaker than what it is at this point.

This is all I can manage tonight since I really had to force myself to come up with something halfway articulate.  So just fair warning, I am probably going to re-visit this topic at another time when I'm feeling more inspired.  Till then...wish me luck on my essays!

Funny Quotes from my Professors

Vertebrate Biology - Dr. Mason

“they go drive and Thump, thump, hitting kangaroos right and left, they have their bars on the front of their vehicles so they don’t wreck their vehicles”

“but if you spent all day eating eucalyptus leaves all day you’d be grouchy too”

“POSSUMS! Go look in your trash cans tonight, there is probably a possum in there.  That’s what their habitats are now those poor little buggers.”

“one persons poison is anothers chanel number 5”

“You remember with the salamanders slapping the females face?  Its like the bad internet porn”

“Do birds have sweat glands?  Do chickens have lips? I threw that one in just for the heck of it.”

“my daughter is as smart as a raccoon. They came up with all these wacky tests and they try to prove that young children are as smart as raccoons”

“when I run up to my office I get a cramp, yu guys have to run to Albany to get a cramp….excersize is bad for you”

“ you know its like one of our previous presidents said nuCLEAR, it is not nuCLEAR its nucleAR! And he’s the one with his finger on the big button!”

“you almost never hear of the gliders having accidents, not like those people who strap lawnmowers to the back of the gliders”

“I wish there was more males in the house besides me and the cat and maybe I would win some of these arguments….but guys we are degenerate, you’ll just have to live with that, of course women already knew that”

“I’m just kidding about the punching, girls like to pull hair”

“That takes 14 books of dinosaur biology and condenses it into less than 5 minutes”

“its good luck when a bird craps on you!....I’m going to use that with my kids”

“I can’t use a bar of ivory soap on my head because as you can see my hair is beautiful”

“I tell my wife why don’t you just use a bar of ivory soap and scrub your head, but she insists on getting these exotic shampoos”

“you can’t get it out of the shell so its like they have a glad bag attached to their butt…I would like to attach a glad bag to my daughter’s butt, then I would only have to change it every month”-on the allantois in amniotic eggs

“We still have lemon meringue pies?...I thought we were all down to twinkies and scooter pies…”

“I’m trying to make this a full service class…explaining the mysteries of life”

“no one likes to admit this but being biologists we can look into our pants and see there is a difference”

“I’m going to explain one of the mysteries of life….so the boys go to the doctor and he STICKS his fingers up your scrotum and says turn your head and cough and you are like *weak cough*”

“its not like those people on that Jersey show is it? God my wife made me watch that and it made me feel ill.  It made me worried about how our civilization will turn out”

“oh but she likes that guy, he has good bubbles”

“if there were salamander Olympics, these guys would be playing tiddly-winks or something” –on plethodontid salamanders

“That would be a good final question, hint hint….has anyone taken English classes? Whats that word called….foreshadowing”

“ You know its like in those magazines at the store with those shrunken heads  and Elvis living on the dark side of the moon…”

“which doctors do the females go to?  The gynecologist, you know the doctors that understand the miles of pipes that no one understands”

Comparative Anatomy - Dr. Warrick

“think hard!!.....TAIL SWIPE” (on the stegosaur brain patterns)

“in Jurassic park, the last one, they basically had the velacoraptors doing differential equations”

“ I love this diagram, its absolutely useless”

"Feeling a bit like Moses, I'm leading you to Nash 204 for class tomorrow. That's west of Cordley; turn left at the Red Sea, which will be parted. There will be manna." (via email)

Invertebrate Biology - Dr. Weis

 “can you really hunt something when you’re radially symmetrical?  Apparently!”

  “hey guys, we have no brains, but lets talk!”

   “nothing is magical anymore, you can find everything on youtube”

“hey dude you’re in my same phylum, but different class”

“zooids mean animal thingy”

“if you come after me, I’ll kill you!” 

“they are brainless wonders!”

“the whole avatar things is totally ripped off from my class”

Green Porno – Isabella Rosellini......watch it and you'll understand why I put this here

“they had just molted and were very vulnerable to predation… and being thrown into batter and deep fried”

I love being a science major....