Confidence is overrated

So if there is one thing I've learned so far in my University career it's just that. Confidence is overrated. You might be thinking it's good to believe in yourself and take pride in your work, well sorry to say this, but you're wrong.

So far the only thing confidence has gotten me is disappointment. Like I said in an earlier post, usually I hand in a paper thinking it's terrible and I'll be lucky if I pass. Believe it or not, this is a much better way to hand in something because when I get my grade, as long as I passed, I'm happy. Sure, maybe I only got 70% but hey it's better than the 30% I thought I deserved.

You've probably realized by now that something like this has happened to me recently. You are correct in thinking that. Over this past week I've had most of my exams and I have also received my grades for many of my final papers. Out of the five papers I handed in I was only confident in two, my english and poli-sci. I thought these two papers were some of my best works, but apparently not. I got 68 on both of them... I was pretty heartbroken about both of these. It's not a good feeling to do all the required readings, show up to class, and then work relatively hard on a paper just to learn it's only satisfactory.

Now I mentioned there was another three papers that I handed in. First was my anthropology paper. I had no idea what the prof wanted. I threw together a ten page paper that was mostly pictures and hoped for the best. Somehow I managed to get 80% on this paper. Another paper I handed in was for my pop-culture class, followers of my blog should know how I feel about that course. Anyway, I had to write a paper about a movie in it's relation to the modern self. I chose Watchmen cause I love that movie. I wrote 8 pages about this movie and how Rorschach and Nite Owl embody the modern self and I got 80 on that paper as well. Finally I had a history paper about television. It sounded fun when I chose the topic but sadly the history of television is much more boring than you would think. I wrote 11 pages of what I felt was garbage and handed it in to one of the most intellectually intimidating professors I have ever met. I got 70 on that paper. Alright so basically what I'm saying is that the papers I have no faith in are apparently my best. I don't get it.

The thing is even if I had gotten 68 on any of those last three papers, I would've been happy. Confidence is a risk with little payout. The best case scenario is that the prof agrees with you, it is a good paper. But most likely, at least in my case, the prof won't agree with you and whatever mark you get you'll be disappointed with. On the other hand, if you hand in a paper thinking it is terrible, then  when you pass it is one of the greatest feelings in the world. When I saw I got 80 on both of those papers I was so much happier than I would've been if I had gotten 80 on my english or poli-sci.

In conclusion, believing in yourself and whatnot is great, just be prepared to be humbled because you're not that great...

Christmas and Growing Up

So it has come to my attention that Christmas is less than two weeks away. Crazy huh? I've made an observation over the last few years, it seems that as we all grow older Christmas grows with us. When you're a kid you count down every second up to Christmas morning, but these last couple years it has almost caught me off guard. Especially since both this and last year I've had an exam less than a week before Christmas, it's a little hard to get into the spirit when you become more concerned with all the terrible things we as humans have done to the earth and each other, thanks Anthropology.

I've told myself that this is why I don't seem to be as excited about Christmas as the years go by. I'm just too busy with school to really enjoy the holiday, makes sense. But maybe I'm just outgrowing Christmas in general. When you're a kid it's just so easy to love Christmas. Any day you got a present was your favourite day. It could be a completely arbitrary day in the middle of August, if you got a present that day, it was your favourite day.

Any Christmas special can tell you the meaning of Christmas, but the more important question is what it means to you personally? When I was young, it was the day my brother, my sister, and I, woke up way too early and sat on our couch and waited for our parents to get up. As the years went on eventually we stopped waking up so early, and it came to the point where we all started getting up at the same time. Does this mean that Christmas means less to me or that Christmas just means something different. I recently enjoyed the Community Christmas Special in which the meaning of Christmas was the belief that Christmas had a meaning. The belief that it isn't just another day.

I like that meaning. I think it becomes even more about our personal interpretations of Christmas as we get older. Like I said earlier, as a kid if I walked out into the living room on a regular Wednesday and found a bunch of presents, I'd be just as happy as I would be on Christmas. If that happened to me now, sure I'd be happy, probably more confused, but it certainly isn't the same as Christmas.

As we grow up we start to care about different things. Maybe we realize that superficial goods don't buy happiness, or maybe we can just afford to buy our own happiness. Maybe we start to realize the importance of family. It's a lot easier to appreciate the time you have with family when you don't see them every day. These last few Christmas's have been a transitioning for me. I started realizing that the presents are no longer the most important thing about Christmas, it really is family. All the Christmas specials were right.

"Every time someone says ‘Happy Holidays’, an angel gets AIDS" Jon Stewart

So about this time every year Christmas and all the other winter holidays creep up on us. And with these holidays the ever growing controversy behind the appropriate yuletide greeting grows. The politically correct thing to say is "Happy Holidays" but does this make anybody happy? Basically anybody you talk to will either say "I hate hearing 'happy holidays'" or they'll say "I don't care, leave me alone." I would bet you a lot of money that nobody would ever rather hear "happy holidays" than their traditional holiday greeting.

The question is who is happy holidays for? I don't personally know the origins of the phrase, but the general understanding is that it was coined to be a politically correct version of Merry Christmas. So what I want to know is this, do people out there actually get offended by Merry Christmas? I realize not everyone celebrates Christmas and that's fine, people can do whatever they want, but why do they have to take it out on the people that do? I don't celebrate Hanukkah but if someone said "Happy Hanukkah" to me I certainly wouldn't feel offended. And also do these bureaucrats not even think about Jehovah's Witnesses? Do they realize that they don't celebrate anything ever? So saying "Happy Holidays" to them, in theory, would be just as offensive as saying "Merry Christmas" to a Jewish person. How long will it be till they clue in and just start saying "Good Winter."  

This whole "Happy Holidays" thing is actually quite a deep problem. Yes, I would much rather hear people saying Merry Christmas, but is that fair? If people are actually offended by Merry Christmas shouldn't we as Christians be more sensitive and try to avoid offending people even if it means doing something we don't necessarily like? It's easy to argue that everyone else is just too sensitive and we're right, but you have to look at this objectively. In Canada we claim to be proud of our diversity so shouldn't we do all that we can to accommodate  people of other faiths who have other traditions?

This is a double-edged sword. On one hand by saying "Merry Christmas" it could potentially be seen as us purposely ignoring other traditions and forcing Christmas on the general population. On the other hand by us not saying "Merry Christmas" it's like us rolling over and letting the government control what we say, it's like Nineteen Eighty-Four but more arbitrary.

So what's right? Are these words really worth all the commotion? I don't have the answers to these questions, what you say around this time of year is your personal choice so do whatever you want... Merry Christmas.