Meeting Standards: Self-Doubt and Competition

I'm exam-free for the academic year! 🥳

Results day nerves kicked in a few moments after my last exam, but we'll deal with that later. I need a break for now! However, less than 48 hours after (as this sentence is being written) I feel completely lost with what to do with myself. No assignments. No revision. What now?

Well, I suppose I should start with a long overdue post, so let's get to it!
Whilst this is written from a student perspective, it can also be applied beyond this type of setting.


One of the biggest challenges I came across throughout my first year as I was completing assignments and revision for exams was self-doubt. Knowing that you know the information and that you DO understand it, but still having that little voice in your head which tells you that you don't. We've all been there.

It's something that I have worked on over the past few years but coming to a place like Warwick where students are generally academically intelligent and where most students are very well-educated from private, grammar, selective, and high-performing schools it was (and rather still is) daunting. I never completely understood the impact of this until being exposed to it. Some will like to show that off as well and some students will try and google you to find out what kind of school you attended and where you are from. Some students won't be afraid to announce their results to everyone also; to tell the whole class that they feel super confident with an exam/ assignment. They have that self-confidence. I wish I could take some of that for myself sometimes!

trajaner | Pixabay

I'm not even going sugar-coat it - for other students like me, it can really take a toll on our self-assurance. Like many others, I often feel like the red egg amongst the white ones in the image on the right. It is something that is difficult to talk about when you're in such a competitive environment. Mostly in fear that other students will look down on you.

If I'm going to be real, some do. They don't realise that not everyone had the same level of education and amount of resources to support them as they did. This is not necessarily out of ignorance, but it's tough to understand the position of someone else when you don't know any better. That's the same for every context, for instance: not understanding the reality of what it's like to have a different career. You can judge and imagine what it may be like to be a teacher, but you will never truly understand the position of one until you have experienced the reality of the context yourself.

Please NOTE before reading the next paragraph: 

Many students are friendly, but like anywhere you go, there will unfortunately be the minority that just stand out.

There have been the odd unpleasant comment and exclamations now and then when I have admitted to not being able to understand certain parts of a lecture or not already having knowledge regarding a given section. I would be lying if I said otherwise. I had to remind myself that it's understandable to some extent because of the reason that I set out above. I say to some extent because there's a line between that and being arrogant. You can guess which part of that bothers me the most.

If you have ever asked a question on your class group chat for someone to hit back at you with an arrogant comment, you know how deflating that it especially in a class of 180+. What's worse is that once that one comment is made, no other student wants to reply to you. 

In the case that you find yourself in such a situation, here are some pointers which I follow by:

1.  Don't be one those people who is too lazy to check your lecture notes when you know the answer to your question is in them. Chances are, you won't get a reply.
2. If you're the one asking, and you find that unpleasant comments are being made: just turn to your lecturer or individual peer members instead. They'll be happy to help!
3. If you're the one replying: think before you make comments. The best thing to do if you don't want to answer the question is to not comment at all. There's no need to be rude about it. You either give the desired answer or you don't. Simple as that.
4. If an arrogant comment has been made don't let them prevent you from not replying. If you can answer the question, answer it and reassure the sender that it's a valid question to ask if need be.

Linking on from that, attending a Russel Group (which essentially refers to research intensity) or a university 'with a name', means that people will assume that you have natural academic intelligence. May be true; may not be true. We'll leave that for the nature vs. nurture debate. Regardless, some people will pick things up at much faster pace than others. Same outcome; different processes.

This was something that really bothered me at first. As well as not having the high A-Level grades that students at Warwick generally do, it seemed that the majority of students around me were able to pick up new material in an instant, something I had not yet got to grips with. I might be able to KNOW the content with the bare minimum depending on the topic, but can I really UNDERSTAND the material without doing the pre-lecture reading, going through lecture notes, watching back over the lecture on lecture capture and adding to notes if necessary, and doing extra reading on top of that? Probably not. I keep asking myself:

"How on Earth am I going to live up to these standards?"

Being someone who started off in secondary school being in bottom set for literally every subject, I have come a long way. That's a result of diligence, and there's no way that I'm going to fall through now that I am here. As with all that extra reading - I promise you that you will thank yourself for it when exams come around.

As well as learning about the impact of educational inequalities in A-Level Sociology, self-fulfilling prophecy was also covered.

"Mens agitat molem" - University of Warwick's motto

Translation: Mind moves mass. In other words: mind moves matter / mind over matter.

Without sounding like I'm writing some sort of fairy tale related novel, you have to believe that you ARE capable. Clearly your admission tutor (or employer if you're doing an apprenticeship or working) thought so to, so prove it to them. In order to do that you need to be able to prove it to yourself first and foremost.

Sure, there are going to be barriers along the way and it's going to be a challenge, but you will learn how to overcome them at one point or another, whether that's in a few hours or several months or perhaps years. Regardless of what university you are at, whether you are doing some sort of apprenticeship, or have taken up a job we're all hit by the same gruelling feeling of needing to act in defiance against ourselves in situations where we feel far from confident.

As I was writing this, I thought of a spiral staircase metaphor, which I'm going to share with you now:

Pxhere | CC0 1.0

See the image on the left?
Imagine yourself at the bottom of that spiral staircase where the top seems unreachable. Perhaps there's a moment you can relate this imagery to. Looking up at the length of the journey and deciding to make that first step upwards takes more strength than we realise. The first few steps after that may be a breeze. Then you will slow down and seem like you haven't made very much progress. You can clearly see the bottom, but the top is still not in sight. From there on there will be times when you will run up the steps. Other times you will slow down. You will also need to stop and take a break every now and then to prevent burnout. Sometimes the steps may disappear for some length and you will find yourself sliding down a few levels. Then there's the middle part where you may feel completely lost. You're just going around and round and round, climbing up, fighting the fatigue and seemingly getting nowhere. Here it's important to look back and reflect on the progress you have made so far. All those hundreds of steps that lie before you. It's an exhausting process. However, it's all worth it when you can finally see the end in sight, and you reach that top platform.

Forget about what point others are in the spiral staircase for a moment. What matters in the present time is that you're here doing whatever it is that you are doing. Take time to look down and reflect on how far you have come. You have already overcome so much (big or small) to get to your current position. That's something to be proud of. It's an achievement. You've done it multiple times previously and you can do it again, only this time it's remembering that that:

You are your biggest competition.

It's something I consistently tell myself time and time again. If you believe that you're going to fall; you are going to fall. Why? You're not going to bother trying to challenge yourself to take those steps and progress so that you are able to reach your potential. That only leads to further dissatisfaction. It's so difficult to fight towards your own willpower.

A lot of this comes from comparison. People are going to make comparisons and I'm not going to say don't compare yourself to others, because it's inevitable that you will no matter how many times that is said. It's human nature to do so. However, don't let your limits and goals depend on that of others. Where YOU are at this moment in time will be completely different to where someone else is. Someone else's next step won't necessarily get you to where YOU are aiming to get to.

It's all about focusing on yourself more and understanding your thought processes. Before you tell yourself that you can't do something, ask why that is. Personally, I find that the answer lies with me comparing myself to others and not having enough faith in my strengths and ability to use them to get myself where I need to be. Whilst competing against others is a challenge, one of the biggest barriers standing in the way is probably my own self-esteem. Competing against your own diffidence takes a great deal of mental strength.

In a university setting it's also a point to remember that unlike with GCSEs and A-Levels, your lecturers aren't comparing your mark to the rest of the cohort before weighting out the grade boundaries accordingly so that only a limited percentage of students can receive a certain grade. They are set in stone. It's your individual piece of work and the mark scheme. You just have to trust that your lecturers won't let the previous piece of marked work dictate what the piece of work they are currently marking will receive.

Jukan Tateisi | Unsplash

Beyond that there are going to be barriers that you can't prevent or have complete control of such as the decisions of others which impact what you do next. They are nerve-wrecking and at times unpredictable, but what we can change is how we react to them; how we use them as lessons to refine our strategies and pinpoint where our weaknesses lie.

I have found that learning to take a step back and giving yourself a moment to reflect upon that and thinking about what YOU need to do next to progress really helps alternative to thinking about what others are doing and what others expect of themselves. Nevertheless, sometimes comparisons can be positive in helping us to explore new options and strategies which we may be able to integrate into our own.

I used to just say that I'm really lucky to be in the position that I am in now. To be able to study in such a wonderful department - which you all know by now - I love. This was because of comparison of a range of things which I have mentioned throughout this post: self-confidence, standards, experience, grades, to name a few.

However, upon reflection I have changed my mind on that. It's not down to luck at all. It's down to hard work and perseverance. It's down to being able to (or at the very least attempting to) challenge myself much more for my own personal needs as for meeting the standards of others. I need to start giving myself credit for that. No matter what anyone else thinks or whether others are several steps above me, I have come a long way from where I was just 6 years ago.

It may not seem like it all the time but so have you. We all have come far from where we have initially stood, wherever that may be. It's important that we recognise and respect ourselves for that.