As a teenager…
I was pretty annoying. I was fairly smart, but not nearly as smart as I thought I was. I would scrape by, putting bare minimum effort into schoolwork because I figured I was good enough to coast through the years at school. I was far more focused on my reputation and what people thought of me. A couple of bad grades in my GCSEs gave me a bit of a wake-up call, motivating me to focus more in my A-Levels. I still didn’t put as much effort into them as I could have done, however, in my sixth form I developed a lot as a person, and realised that it didn’t really matter what people thought, but instead how much I valued myself as a person.
After school…
I knew I wanted to head straight to university! I had always planned to study film at university, which is exactly what I did. It was a big difference from my school. I was no longer a big fish in a little pond, I was a little fish in a big pond. There were people surrounding me every day who were smarter than me. At first, this bothered me, as I had grown used to being in top sets in high school. However, soon after I learned that as long as I was doing the best that I could do- other people’s grades don’t have any affect on me at all.
Now I’m…
more comfortable with who I am as a person. My journey through high school and university has led to me becoming the person that I want to be. I am happy to be involved in E2M, an organisation with such a pure cause. I enjoy traveling the world, ensuring that I go on at least one or two international trips per year. And most importantly, I’ve learned how to be confident in who I am, without comparing myself to others and regardless of what other people think.