self-righteousness

Last week I was eaten by incessant worries. Because I was worrying so much about college in thoughts like these: that I'd not get recognition if I didn't go to a very fancy school - I'm afraid of not being recognized, of being overlooked - that I'd be stuck in mediocrity. I thought of this list that they posted up at the end of last term at my school: it said where all the graduated seniors went to college. When I saw a fancy name - Emerson! Johns Hopkins! Wagner! Johnson and Wales! and so on - I admired the student under whose name such titles were printed and thought of how he or she must have been so talented to go to such a place. I admit that I can be quite a jealous girl and rather a spotlight-hog. I was thinking in secret: if I didn't have a fancy school under my name, no one would look at it and admire me. Then I'd be jumping up and down vying for recognition: "Waitwait! But I got straight A's too!" and such. Then I realized, I'm a brat, aren't I?

At least I can be. Goodness, I'm annoying. I'm not really modest. I want things. I can't stand others being recognized and myself being overlooked. What a conceited snob.

But I still want it. For someone to look at the respected name listed under mine and think that I achieved something. I try too, too hard to impress other people. I feel like I have to prove myself. Having been "the quiet one", "the shy one" all my life and hating that image with such a passion, I want someone - a stranger - a fellow student whom I've never talked to - to think, there's more to her than I thought; she's not that little meek mouse after all. That's what it comes down to. I fear going to a not so fancy school would make people think that I did so because it was safe and that's what mousy shy girls do: never step off of the safe path. Really in secret I long to be thought of as daring and dynamic...