How to Build Your Confidence at College
Confidence is not something that people are born with; it’s a skill that everyone can gradually acquire and develop. And it’s an important one too! Without it, your college life can turn into a miserable experience, encompassing the following things:
- Not using every opportunity presented to you in college and missing out a lot
- Getting stressed out over nothing and letting your mental health go downhill
- Not reaching your full academic potential and barely hanging onto the curriculum.
However, there are several things that you can do to make yourself more and more confident. Here are the points that will boost your confidence:
Don’t Listen to Your Inner Saboteur
Even the most confident people you know in your life have this annoying little defeatist voice. It’ll go out of its way to make you feel small and inadequate. It constantly says things like, “You’re not worth it” or “You shouldn’t try new things because you’ll fail.”
That’s your inner saboteur talking – the best thing to do about it is not listen to it. All you can acknowledge is that you’re having these thoughts but not getting manipulated by them. Remember, you’re already in a higher education institution, which means you’ve already been in several things.
People Around You Can Support You
People often create a misconception in their minds that they’re all alone with their problems in the world. That’s not the case on many occasions – if you’re feeling insecure and insufficient, there many people willing to help you.
Whenever such negative thoughts visit you, remember that your coursemates may feel absolutely the same way. You’re not alone in experiencing doubt and inadequacy, and you’ll be surprised how much others share these feelings.
Choose a Subject You’re Good At
Every new semester at your college, you have to pick new courses to pass. Don’t pack your semester full of impossible courses on which you’ll struggle. Make room for at least one course that you know you’ll breeze through and enjoy. It’ll help significantly to boost your confidence.
Deal With Small Tasks at the Start
Create small milestones for yourself during your first year at college. What do we mean by this? The first task can be as small as approaching your professor after the lecture to discuss things. Or answer a question during a big hall lecture.
Later, it could be joining an extracurricular club and getting to know people. In the end, you’ll be able to handle much bigger tasks like handing several term papers on time. This gradual growth extremely helps with building up your confidence.
Get Help When You Really Need It
Using an essays edit service, like EssayEdge, when appropriate can also boost your self-esteem. When you’re struggling with the academic aspect of college life, you have to recognize it and act appropriately as you can use the editing options just to highlight mistakes and rewrite everything clearly by yourself. So it may help you to feel more confident and secure as you have a professional’s feedback on your writing.
Professional editors can help you to understand what information in your essay is not necessary, or vice versa, they can point you on the facts that should be added. But note that editors will not rewrite your paper for you, as the use of writing services does not meet the standards of the academic community.
Take a Course With a Small Number of Attendees
You would think that going to big lectures with the number of attendees going into hundreds makes you feel safe. However, it can be highly alienating and might make you feel, especially alone and incapable of anything. Instead, try choosing a course with a small class; it’ll allow you to establish real-life relationships with others. It can be enormously empowering.
Discuss Your Progress With the Tutors
There’s a great trick that can help you with your confidence and your academic performance. What is it? It’s very easy – talking and discussing your progress and course-related things with your professor. If you start doing this early, you’ll get a big head start on other students, thanks to getting useful insights.
Chop Up the Big Assignments
You’ll inevitably have particularly big problems or assignments at college, like preparing for an exam or writing a research paper. To efficiently deal with big loads of work, you want to follow the following methodology of dividing your work:
- Divide the existing problem into a couple of layers of smaller tasks
- Categorize each small task by its type of work and group similar ones together
- Start working on the small tasks and make it interesting by rotating through categories
- Reward yourself after reach every task, no matter its size
- Profit from quickly and effortlessly dealing with big assignments.
Remember – You’re Only Learning
Throughout your college, you have to keep in mind that you’re only learning. What does it have to do with anything? Well, it means that you have a lot of leeway in making mistakes. You’re not working, so nobody will get particularly hurt if you put in the wrong number in your paper. College is the time to make mistakes and improve yourself, so don’t be too harsh.
Apply the Acquired Knowledge in the Real World
In the third or fourth year of college, you’ll most likely have some internship opportunities – take them. They will show you that you still have gone a long way, although you may not know everything. It’s a great experience, as it’ll give a small taste of the world lying outside of college.
Avoid Toxic People
Don’t let other people put you down. If you feel like some specific person or group of people is only finds bad in your achievements – avoid them. There’s nothing wrong with cutting out negative and toxic people from your life. After you do this, you might notice that your inner saboteur will start to go away too.
You’ll Become Confident Over Time
Becoming more confident is a process, and it’s a long one. So, please don’t push yourself and make use of our tips. You’ll become much more confident!
