Earlier on this term, my dear friend and co-editor graced you with a wonderful run down of her most intimate musings on teenage life. Her insights were wholly perceptive, and at times painfully relatable, so with the hope of bringing you more of that delicious feeling of realising that you are not the only person who feels a certain way, today I bring to you another edition of ‘The Trials and Tribulations of Teenage life’.
When reflecting on my life I often wonder; have I always been confident? Was I ever the first to speak up in a lesson? Did I always find it relatively easy to speak to adults? And have I always felt able to express myself clearly around strangers? The answer that I always seem to come to is no. Year 7 me did hesitate before speaking up in front of her class. She blushed when her buddy asked what her name was, and her heart raced when she was picked for a game of “Guess Who?” and had to stand up in front of her entire house group. But if this is the case, then what changed? What was it that freed me from that sense of dread that I felt when more than ten people were looking at me? Who untied my tongue and who slowed my heart so that it didn’t feel like I was going to explode sometimes?
Well I’ll start by saying that these feelings probably never completely go away. Nerves and adrenaline are usually integral ingredients for success in life, built in to our ‘human hard-drives’ to protect us. Some people find it much easier to cope with these feelings, and others find certain situations especially difficult. But in what little of my life that I have lived so far, I have learnt that trusting in your own abilities is the best tool for overcoming a stressful situation. In other words, the racing heart and sweaty palms might never go away, but the more you remind yourself that you are completely capable, the easier it will be to perform under pressure. And I feel that this can be applied to anything in life, it could be talking to a new person, being interviewed, performing something or expressing yourself in a way you’ve never done before.
Being confident in yourself, however, does not make you immune from self-doubt. Those crushing moments where you question what you said in a particular moment do still exist, you can still find yourself debating whether you deserve an award or recognition and you most probably will still second guess your answers to that exam paper you took recently. What I hope for anyone reading this though, is that these moments will start to become exceptions rather than rule. Until one day you find yourself sat in a chair, being asked questions by people you admire, for a job that you never thought you might get, and even though your hands are shaking under the table you know that you will be able to do yourself justice.
So from one teenager trying to figure out life to another, I pass a comforting reminder that your individual life experiences have shaped you in a way that is completely unique; you are unlike anyone else, you are whole and you are adequate. Never let anyone tell you anything different.
Written by Tamsin Hollyman yr12
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