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Finding your confidence: value yourself, value your foolishness
Monica Pan '19

In her junior speech delivered on January 22, Monica Pan '19 shared a personal story about how she learned to embrace her "foolishness" and grow in confidence.

What little girl doesn't dream of being a star shining on the stage?

Now close your eyes and imagine this: you are a seven-year-old girl, filled with confidence. First time in your life, you are chosen by a national TV show. It's one of those shows where you perform your talent and in the end there is a big winner. Trying to catch people's attention and winning the contest, you express your characteristics confidently, probably also with some exaggeration. After shooting the TV episode, you are thrilled with your performance! You've made it to the top three!

However, after the show aired, you suddenly became the target of gossip and public comments because the video editors took the comments you made out of context and played them on the show. Your friendly teasing of the other competitors seemed more critical, aggressive, and even mean. The audience saw you in a completely different way than you had intended.

You feel humiliated. The TV station received great ratings for the show, but you lost your reputation. You are devastated.

What will you do now? Question your actions? Hide from the world? Declare your innocence? Or will you completely lose your confidence, and promise your parents that you are finished with TV and stage forever?

Now... open your eyes. I can't predict what each of you would do, but I know what the girl did because I am that girl.

I did all of those things.

Except, one day I broke my "promise" and accepted other shows' offers.

This is why I changed my mind:

First, there may be people who hate you, but there are also people who love you.

Second, we should see criticism NOT as a permanent judgment; but a suggestion that gives us a chance to improve ourselves.

Third, if you do not believe in yourself, who else will? So please be yourself and express yourself confidently.

That day I lost my confidence because I relied on other people's praises, but I rebuilt my self-confidence. People often say that "self-confidence is the first step to success because half the battle is won (1) with it." But where and how can I get this weapon?

To look confident and smart, we often try to draw our attention to our strengths: our intelligence, our competence, our experience. When we grow too comfortable in our personal lives, we become anxious in any situations that seems to threaten us. Then our insecurity rises. So we start to hold back from challenges. We think there is a chance our lives will keep getting better without regularly making a complete idiot of ourselves. However, from time to time, by living a timid existence, we miss out the best opportunities.

According to a book called In Praise of Folly, the Dutch scholar and philosopher Erasmus advances a liberating argument saying "everyone is a fool." No one is spared, not even the author himself.

However, important, learned, or well-educated as he was, Erasmus insists that he is as much of an idiot as anyone else; his judgement could be faulty, and he is also prey to irrational fear. He is shy whenever he has to meet new people, he might also drop things at a formal dinner. But looking foolish or doing bizarre things will never exclude us from the best college, or render us unfit for society.

This message appears again in a painting by Pieter Brueghel, called The Dutch Proverbs. It presents a comically disenchanted view of human nature. Everyone in this painting is pretty much deranged. Here is a man throwing his money into the river. There is a soldier squatting on the fire and burning his trousers. Someone is intently bashing his head against a brick wall. Someone else is biting a pillar. The painting is not of a few unusually awful people. It's a picture of parts of all of us.

Brueghel's and Erasmus's work propose that being self-confident is not to reassure ourselves of our own dignity and perfection. Being self-confident is to grow despite our inevitable ridiculous nature.

We are "idiots" now, we've been "idiots" in the past, and we will be "idiots" again in the future – and that's OK. Once, we to see ourselves as, foolish by nature, it really does not matter so much if we do one more thing that might make us look a little bit stupid. A fear of humiliation would no longer stalk us in the shadows of our minds.

I looked "foolish" on that TV show, but I learned to laugh at myself and then to move past that moment on to better things. My parents and friends love me. And... I learned from the mistakes I made in thinking the TV show's producers had my best interest at heart. This is how I was able to rebuild my faith in myself.

Mr. O'Shea said at the beginning of the semester, "Don't judge others, but value them." Today, I want to add to his advice: do not judge yourself, but value yourself, and value your foolishness.