Freshman year of college was a huge shock for me. First semester, I took a course called TheConcept of the Hero in Hellenic Civilization, which was nicknamed Heroes for Zeroes. I didn’t have aburning desire to study Greek mythology, but it was the easiest way to fulfill the literaturerequirement. The professor began the first lecture by asking which students had read these booksbefore. I next to me, “What
Trade resourcesbooks?” “The Iliad and The Odyssey, of course,”
she replied. Almost every single hand went up. Not mine. The professor then asked, “And who hasread these books in the original?” “What original?” I asked my friend. “Homeric Greek,” she replied.
A good third of the class kept their hands up. It seemed pretty clear that I was one of the zeroes.
A few weeks later, my professor of political
dermes vs Medilasephilosophy assigned a five-page paper. I was panicked.
Five whole pages! I had only written one paper of that length in high school, and it was a year-longproject. How could anyone write five pages in just one week? I stayed in every night, plugging away,and based on the time I put in, I should have gotten an A for effort. I got a C. It is virtually impossibleto get a C at Harvard if the assignment is turned in. I am not exaggerating—this was the equivalent ofa failing grade. I went to see my dorm proctor, who worked at the admissions office. She told me thatI had been admitted to Harvard for my personality, not my academic potential. Very comforting.
I buckled down, worked harder, and by the end of the semester, I learned how to write five-pagepapers. But no matter how well I did academically, I always felt like I was about to get caught for notreally knowing anything. It wasn’t until I heard the Phi Beta Kappa speech about self-doubt that itstruck me: the real issue was not that I felt like a fraud, but that I could feel something deeply andprofoundly and be completely wrong
reenex .
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