Self Esteem

When I was growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which was a rural area not known for scholarship or scholarly thinking, I didn't have a high opinion of myself. By that, I don't mean that I had a low opinion of myself but that there were plenty of people around me who I thought of as being smarter than I was, or better than me in other ways.

In elementary school, I was related to pretty much everyone so I felt comfortable being who I was. I don't believe that I stuttered in elementary school but I began stuttering some in high school.

Those of us from Wallace were bused to Stephenson for high school, where we made up only about ten percent of the class, and I didn't know most of the rest of them, except that it turned out that I was related to more than a few of them too.

My stutter wasn't an overly debilitating stutter but sometimes, when I most wanted to make a point, I would stutter at the beginning of my sentence. If someone laughed, it would get worse, otherwise once I got started, I would usually do okay.

In one of my freshman English classes, we put on a play, and I found that I had no problem at all reciting lines. If they weren't my words or thoughts, then there was no stutter. I volunteered with a community theater group in Stephenson that wasn't connected with the school system, and never had a problem stuttering during performances.

Anyhow, I don't want to dwell on the stuttering because that wasn't a huge problem, and I pretty much quit stuttering after high school, although it still occurs once in awhile.

The point that I wanted to make was that I considered myself to be pretty average during elementary school and high school. I could do well in school when I wanted to, and if that had been a priority for me, I don't doubt that my grades would have been pretty high. As it was, they weren't bad. I had trouble with Algebra and Geometry, but I still managed B's and C's, albeit with a bit of cheating, and those were my worst grades.

But there were plenty of people who seemed to be able think more quickly than I did, and who knew things that I hadn't even considered learning. In conversation, I was more often a part of the audience rather than a participant.

Plus, I had no talent for things like construction or design, and I was pretty much the only kid in Wallace who never learned to skate. I don't even know when my cousins learned to do that, because it seemed that I was with them all the time, yet all of a sudden everyone but me knew how to skate.

My cousin, Calvin, who was born a few hours before I was, and who lived across the field from me, could design buildings that we made as summer shacks, even from a very young age. When he was about twelve, he put a discarded washing machine motor on his bicycle and built himself a motorcycle that actually worked. From other old washing machine motors, he built us all go-carts that worked great.

However, when I went to college, I hardly had to work at all for a good grade, and in a creative writing course, I was given a perfect score on a story that I barely spent any time on at all, and which I didn't think was all that good. I couldn't stay because I couldn't afford more than a couple of semesters.

Then at some point, after I had moved to California, it seemed to me that everyone around me was dumber than I was. I don't mean that in a bragging sort of way, and I don't think I let anyone know that, but it seemed that way. Also, I don't mean to say that I was the smartest person I knew, as there have always been people who I could look up to.

I put in for promotions to jobs that I didn't consider myself to be qualified for because everyone else who was applying for it was less qualified than I was. Although mechanical abilities are pretty near the bottom on my list of things that I can do well, my highest earning years ever were as a paper bag machine adjuster.

Although I wasn't particularly ambitious as far as positions and salaries went, it annoyed me to have to take orders from people who I thought were dumber than I was, so I would advance.

I went back to college to become a youth minister and although I later decided that this wasn't what I wanted to do, I had no problem standing up in front of a congregation of people.

I found EMT and paramedic school to be easy, despite the fact that I was working a full-time job at the time, and I went on to become an EMS instructor straight out of my own paramedic course.

But it was more than work or school accomplishments. I no longer felt inferior to people around me. Even with those who I looked up to, I felt that I could hold my own in a conversation. After I had been teaching for a while, I began to be called to testify as an expert witness in malpractice suits involving EMS personnel or ambulance companies, and all but one of the lawyers who were handling these cases didn't impress me a bit. One of them was a huge exception, and I expect that was why he made the big bucks.

I don't mean that I think everyone around me is an idiot because that's not the case, although a lot of them are, and there are still plenty of things that I'm not good at. I am not very good at trivia. If I'm watching someone else doing trivia, I can often think of the answers but when I am the one on the spot, I freeze.

My wife is a lot smarter than I am. For a while, she was on some medications that were causing problems with her concentration and I could beat her playing cards nine times out of ten. Now, she has her medication straight and she beats me a lot. I threaten to talk to her doctor, to see if we can get her back on the medication she was taking before so I can start winning again.

But even when I felt comfortable in that role during elementary school, I felt that I was merely average, but now I feel that I have done okay for myself and think of myself as being above average, sometimes even quite a bit above average, although there are certainly people who are more accomplished than I am.

 

Because I thought of it and I hadn't contributed much to the forum today, since I've been in Bangor.