Downer day

Today my confidence took a bit of a hit.  Rather, every time I start to get down to business and look into grad school options, my confidence hits rock bottom.  I feel like I'm already too stupid to ask questions, because I'm asking the sort of questions I should already know the answer too - either because I should already be further along in my research, or because I should already know those things, period, if I want to consider further education.

I feel inarticulate (this post is probably proving my point) and lost, and I feel like I convey that in my quest.  Sitting down to write emails to professors, program heads, friends, I feel like I'll lose more than gain.

I can't say I came out of college feeling like I was the smartest kid in the class - I was sometimes painfully aware of that.  But in the 5 years since, I feel like whatever minimal confidence I had about the skills I had to offer the world, has disappeared.

I have no hope for competing against either incoming recent undergrads or those who have been working for the past 5 years in a related field.  After working a year at a language school and a university, which I can hardly call teaching as it is, I'm also forced to admit that what I did for two years in Spain was a far cry from any of it.  So, given my last 5.5 years since graduation, how can I prop up my limited and unrelated experience for grad school.

Yuck.  It's just so hard to believe that I'm good for doing anything except for what I'm doing right now. And I hate what I'm doing right now.

And I know I need to force myself to do these things, to ask these questions, to reach out, despite having the repulsion to do so.  Because I know that's the only way I'll get anywhere.  And I'm hoping that maybe, along the way, a kernel of confidence might grow inside again.