(And also, Day 6 of my 30-day blogging challenge.)

I noticed it when I started uni. When I was one among hundreds in a lecture theatre, the only person without a confident opinion to share in a tutorial. “I’m not as smart as they are,” was the tune of its first verse, the second, which developed shortly after, more sinister: “I’m not smart at all.” 

I’d never really doubted myself throughout my childhood and teens, where every day brought the same faces, and proof of my capabilities, as I saw it, in dependable friendships and healthy test scores.

What changed was the faces I saw at uni were rarely ever the same. A new effort was required of me to make new friends, and I discovered a very real fear of making a fool of myself in front of these new faces – I was scared to prove to them true what I feared myself: that I wasn’t smart.

(To be continued.. Is this cheating on my blog challenge? Hmmm.. don’t care.)