The list of 5 things I'm proud of - #1

[silveradept]

This series of entries are tagged. It's that damn important for me, that I want to be able to find these in the vast myriads of links and Livejournal posts.

This entry comes about because, in conversing with him, 2dlife challenged me with a simple task: "Write five things about yourself that you are proud of, without using any qualifications or comparisons."

I stalled out at three at the time. And it took me a very long time to get numbers four and five on the list. I said that when I got to five, I'd go back and write out an LJ entry for each one of them, and then at the end, I'd open up the floor to see if I missed anything. Since 2dlife said that he'd come up with ten in my struggle to find three, I suspect there's a lot there I'm not noticing.

A few days ago, I finally found #5. So now I'm fulfilling the other part of the requirement. It's time to write some self-praise. Most likely, I'm well-overdue for it. Here we go.

#1: I have graduated from the University of Michigan, with high honors and high distinction. And then I graduated again two years later.

My bachelor's degree is one of my greatest achievements to this date - and it rolls in several other statements about me - I was able to get into the University, and able to finish the course of study, not only writing an undergraduate thesis, but receiving high honors and finishing with a grade point average that is in the top 10% of my class. And then I got into the graduate school, went through the course of study, and graduated from that, too. Anyway, what this says about me is one of the few things that I've been mostly proud about in my life - I'm a pretty smart person. In the times where I'm not the greatest of sport players, or I despair for not having a harem of girls hanging off my arms, I can still take comfort in having high intelligence. Does that mean I take comfort in knowing exactly why it isn't working, or take comfort in being able to fix it when something looks like it's not going to work? Something like that. There's something to be proud of for being smart in the book sense. Maybe it's the ability to rise above the pettiness of high school and not get drawn into those kinds of politics when they reappear later in life. Intelligence and experience both grant perspective. That perspective is something to be proud of.

They also grant the ability to avoid getting painted too much by one's family when they start tossing off in-jokes, strange jokes and long-winded jokes involving describing things in their most wordy way. Eventually, it lets you shoot back. This is something to be proud of, as the people who have been around my family (or me) will attest.

So, it's worth being proud of myself for being bright, and the tangible manifestation of that is in the degree that I currently have with me in my room. I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far in the academic sphere. That should translate into success in the career field as well.

That's one. There are four more to go that I've thought of.

Comments

[2dlife.livejournal.com]

This is the exact problem I was trying to address with the prompt. We're conditioned to not be proud. Humility is a Christian virtue, and a Confucianist one. This way, we always seek to qualify any positive statement we make about ourselves. At the same time, we also feel the need to constantly compare ourselves against others "I'm better at X than him, I can't do Y as well as her." The problem with this occurs when you demean him or feel intimidated by her because of these things. The goal of the exercise is to show that you can be legitimately proud of yourself for just being yourself and doing the things that you've done.

[silveradept]

On the end of that, I'd also say that the other virtue of those two systems is "work". The things that require work to hone and refine and make good are seen as being more worthy of praise than those things that come naturally. Humility is still the over-arching idea, but people seem more willing to cut you some slack if you say "Hey, I worked darn hard for that."