Getting Better at What You Do in School: Developing Self-Confidence

Psychologists used to say that a feeling of superiority concealed an inferiority complex. Fortunately, psychology seems to have moved on a bit from this banal view. Certainly, there are people who suffer from a high measure of self-doubt, who bluster to cover up what they fear are their shortcomings.

The best way to get a confidence kick is to seek informed and balanced assessment of your work from people who are in a position to be fair and who invariably display good judgment. The best confidence builder of all, of course, is success and esteem. If your peers or seniors say your work is good, then you won't want to dispute that. But there is a problem inherent in this, too. Until you reach the cosy point where you can bathe in the praise of others, you have to have enough confidence in what you are doing to persist to the point of success. Too often other people don't really know whether the material they are reading is good or not.

Take as an obvious example the many best-selling books were rejected over and over again by eminent publishing houses. The publishers, or more particularly their manuscript readers who report on projects, simply failed to see the value of the material. They may even have failed to perceive the quality of the writing or they may have simply looked at the sales potential and concluded the market was too small for such a work.

There are many surprising examples of this - Watership Down by Richard Adams became a classic of its kind. Another often rejected title, The Peter Principle, became common parlance when the book was finally published, and we still talk about the concept to explain managerial incompetence.

So beware of trite critics spouting meaningless words. It may even be that, in the final analysis, only you really understand the value and excellence of your work - and had you lost confidence in that, it might never have reached the audience it deserved or earned the concomitant respect. Believe, then, in yourself.

Gateways to your future
The foregoing has been an attempt to relate the mundane work of essays and exams to the wider world of achievement and modern society. As the information highway assumes an even greater role in our lives we will be turning back from the world of TV images to the communicative potential of the written word. Presumably, some kind of spoken and visual form of immediate communication will develop in the future to build on the global networks now being established through computers linked to a modem. In the interim, however, writing skills will continue to be vital.

The assessments and marks won from school and university work are the first outside and, hopefully, impartial views of your ability, your first real brush with critical acclaim or condemnation. They are also gateways through which you must pass to attain your future career options, so they are going to affect your life profoundly for good or ill.

Because of this, you must maximize your potential by learning the language of educational communication on which exam and essay success rests.

Resources:
http://www.wikihow.com/Build-Self-Confidence
http://www.whitedovebooks.co.uk/audio/confidence/