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!