I don't know.

Sometimes I think because of my age, people are giving me concessions.

Not that I'm entirely against this; during the SFF panel, it was because of my age that people listened/ let me speak. (heh.)

It's just that sometimes *because* of my age people expect me not to perform as well as those older than me, and then I just stupidly underperform. I then think it's more acceptable to underperform, and use age as an excuse for not producing better work.

"Work" in this case refers to how I express myself in videos, and sometimes on blogs. Sometimes I feel like I'm just as articulate as my 14 year-old self, and I haven't moved on from that. I hate it. Take, for example, how I express myself here:

and compare how I talk about the SFF panel to how @jolantru talks about it. Do you see? The epic GULF that separates our quality of discussion?

It's also because michele talked about this student-run opinion online magazine, and suggested I submit an article. She's submitting one. I don't think I'm good enough to match up to the people who are appearing in the first issue-- they are the best of the best in my school-- so I'm hesitant about writing something. I think I'll just wait till the first issue comes out to see what the ~vibe is like, and to see what kind of stuff they want, before submitting.

Michele's suggestion also lead me to look through past posts, and I have to admit that most of my *remotely* intellectual things are terribly short and underdeveloped. (Surprise, surprise, teachers say this about my essays at school also) Otherwise they're just ranty posts concerning myself. Guess I have to try a lot harder at being articulate. Although I don't intend to be consciously articulate on this blog, probably on my um yet-undone book blog.

Not that I'm complaining. It sounds like I'm complaining. I'm just happy that my peers are better at everything than I am-- and this is a positive thing. Michele has a quote about this on her tumblr... *searches* Ah. Yes.

"Hang out with people who are smarter and as or more driven than you, and you will drift in that direction."

And this has been proven through, for most of my education at least. Not to sound bigheaded, but when you're placed with people who are constantly ousting you in everything they do, you have a natural compulsion to match up to them. It works, not only academically but when I was learning about leadership skills. When my peers were so able to manage groups of people, it made me want to pull my weight, and along the way I learnt how to manage stressful situations, and how to adapt to new environments. Sometimes you only become aware of how much you've changed because of your better peers when you're put with people who are not as able.

Ok like in my cca I used to take it for granted that everyone would pull their weight and follow up with everything and be on their toes without being told, but sometimes on volunteer stints I see people slacking and not being up to par, and THEN you realise what you've learnt/ taken with you. Eg we learnt in my cca that panicking in a stressful situation is the worst thing to do, because other people are following you and taking cues from your leadership. If you're a leader, and you spazz out, what are your followers going to do? Someone eventually has to pick up after you and fill in where you're falling behind, and you don't want to have people to babysit you all the time. Also panicking is very counter-productive: you waste unnecessary energy, and you don't spend time trying to rectify the situation. No one wants to have to deal with your emotional outbursts during a critical period. You have to think clearly and be definite about what has to be done, and either communicate to others about this, or get it done yourself.