How did I make the wrong choice when I tried so hard to avoid it? Alice Follow Jul 8, 2016 · 3 min read

Growing up, I was the “smart” kid.

I could multiply before the others could even add. I would rarely ever get a B on my report card. People would come to me when they had trouble with homework (and wanted to copy off of mine)…

Heck, I even won the school spelling bee and won regionals.

Teachers loved me, others would think I was so bright. I could become whoever I wanted to be.

Then it happened. By “it” I am referring to the horrendous excuse to torture and stress out youth. The International Baccalaureate program.

The IB program is for bright kids, like I was. It was perfect! It would get me into a good university, and give me a better work ethic. Both of which it did, but it also ruined a part of my life that I don’t know if I’ll ever get back.

I may be sounding over-dramatic, but I’ll explain what I mean. When you’re “smart” half of that intelligence comes from the confidence you have in your answers. The more confidence you have, the more people believe you and the more you believe in yourself. Not only that, but that confidence also gives you the boost you need to take on more challenges. If you think you’re incapable, you’ll never be able to do anything.

I had confidence going into IB. And truth be told, grade 9 went smoothly (I guess). I was still one of the teacher’s favourite students, my grades were all very decent. But as I got older, and the more people started to drop out of IB, I was left with a bunch of extremely bright students. I really don’t know how my confidence started to plummet, but I came to the realization that everyone was better than me, at the thing I was best at. It hit me hard. Now, that confidence that was apparent in my youth is no longer there.

Because of my total and complete loss of confidence, I decided to choose a major that would be more safe in the long run. I wanted to be a cardiologist or a family doctor, but when I saw that everyone was better than me, I never believed I could get a good score on the MCAT. I decided to skip out on taking biology, and took Computer Science instead. (To make matters worse, my lowest IB mark was in biology, and my highest was in math).

Note: I don’t “not” like CS. But I was just SO behind, because I didn’t already have that focus. Before my confidence plummet, I believed that I could be a doctor. I had never even taken CS classes before.

So now I am in CS. At Waterloo. And I DON’T understand why I do this to myself. IB was difficult and caused my confidence to go from 100 to 50. UWaterloo is going to make my confidence go from 50 to 0.

I’m the type of person that can thrive in supportive environments. I can only thrive when I know I can do it. But going to UWaterloo is going to make me lose all little hope I have left.

I feel (and know) that I am inferior to everyone now. Forever.

I am scared.

There is no moral or conclusion to this. I just needed to rant about how I’m feeling. I’m tearing up as I am rereading this. It’s been really hard for me.