give me a lifetime of security.

People are really more intelligent than they seem. Just because the grades don’t add up to over a 4.0 GPA; just because they’re not all in honors classes; just because they aren’t churning out the right responses to the right questions…school is only one thing. Personally I respect a good debater a hundred times more than I respect someone who gets the good grades. There are people out there who can convince me to agree with them in just a few, concise sentences. People whose observation skills just astound me, even if they're usually negative reflections. These are the ones who might not be the valedictorians, but they’re incredibly sharp and way smarter than one would think. Seriously, some of us have to realize we are not just our grades, or our test scores, or our extracurricular activities. There’s a lot more to us than what the college admission officers see. Keep that in mind for the upcoming year.

Somehow, I always feel obligated to discuss music when I open this Blogger window. Duffy is a Welsh singer with her album, Rockferry, coming out this Tuesday. She has a solid voice, and backed with jazz, the album is pretty great. Apparently, her and Adele are being called the new Amy Winehouses. Adele sounds more like Winehouse than Duffy does (actually, Duffy doesn’t sound like her whatsoever), but truthfully Adele just reminds me of Missy Higgins. No big, they’re both good. There’s also Search/Rescue, who happens to be a combination of the members of Acceptance and Gatsby’s American Dream. Their album The Compound is a gift from God if you’re one of those people who miss Acceptance like crazy (man, were they good). What else? Love in the Club feat. Young Jeezy by Usher is #1 on iTunes. What do you know? Mixtapemaestro is incredibly perceptive, two months in advance. Suckers.

The newspaper came out yesterday. I’m always caught off guard when people give this underhanded compliment to me, saying “Normally I don’t like the paper, but your articles are really good!” I don’t have low self-esteem or anything, but I don’t get it. I read the entire paper, including my own articles that I’ve already read multiple times, and nothing about my articles is more stellar than everyone else’s. But I’ll gladly take the compliment.

That also reminds me. There was an article on impostor syndrome, which I didn’t even know existed although I have all of its signs. Impostor syndrome is when people internally think they don’t deserve the success they have achieved, and they convince themselves that the success was luck, timing, or another factor other than themselves. You know what? That’s me. The exact definition of me. I always prepare for the worst. After a test or an audition, I constantly tell myself, “I know I won’t make it. I know I failed. I know I did badly,” even though I know it’s not true, although I’m sure it’s not true sometimes. Preparing yourself for failure is easy, and never disappoints—at least not as much as preparing yourself for success does. Imagine this. If you were expecting an F and got a F, the impact wouldn’t be as bad, right? But say you thought you got an A, and you actually failed. The devastation is horrendous. But the best feeling, and one that happens pretty often to me, is expecting the F and getting the A. Maybe it’s for these amazing moments that I continue to have this impostor syndrome. Regardless, I found it funny there were other people out there, not just in high school, who played these mind games. People who play the game their entire lives.