Feel confidence ebbing away...

LegacyUser

I seem to be getting more and more unsure of myself.
I never had a lot of confidence, was always very shy when I was younger. I was bullied when I was younger because I did well in school and basically the bullys made me feel worthless. I was constantly reminded how nobody liked me and how I ruined everything. Looking back now I see how stupid it was to listen to them, but I did and now I feel that this is where my self doubt started.
When I went into secondary school, I became friends with another loner. Hes a lad but because he didnt play football and stuff everyone called him gay. We became best friends and pretty soon he became very popular.

Idont really know why Im writing this but I just feel so lost. Im so nervous about what people think of me. My friends constantly slag me and Im seen as the weak one of the group. This mainly started this year because Ive started working at school again. My family think they are just jealous of me because they dont do well but idk....

Basically I just have no confidence at all in myself and I want to know how to change that and how to stop caring what peole think.

Des Carter

Hi OP
Iv read your post and ill give you my opinion.

The first thing I noticed was

hatebeingshy wrote: »

I I was bullied when I was younger because I did well in school and basically the bullys made me feel worthless.

.

Ok TBH in national school I was in a similiar situation. It was different in that they didnt really bully me, they more slagged me off cause I didnt fit in with the group (no good at sport etc) and wasnt very good at school. I was also lucky in that I did not take any head of them which helped. However I also discovered something interesting in that when I talked to these guys one-on-one they would be totally sound and they only acted like asses when they were in a group. So its like they are only insulting you to look cooler infront of friends. Did any of them insult you when there was no one around? Im hoping the answer is no cause that will prove my point.

The next thing is

My friends constantly slag me and Im seen as the weak one of the group. This mainly started this year because Ive started working at school again.

Ok the only advice I can give you is that if you are being slagged for being good at school use it to your advantage and do the best you can at school. From what I can gather there seems to be a culture of doing poorly at school. I was similiar in that hardly anyone in my national school went to college and this was all good and well during the boom but not any more. So the point Im trying to make is that you should set your sights on an academic goal which Im going to persume would include going to college.which I would strongly recommend as thats what I did.

In my situation I was never part of the popular gang or the nerds as I hated studying and going out equally. However I forced myself to study for the leaving and managed to get a good course in a University and let me tell you that if you hated national and secondary school like I did you will love college. Its great cause all the juvenile cr*p like your gay if you dont play football goes away and there is so many people your bound to meet people you get along with and there is no popular crap going on. Also if your shy are find it hard to make friends just find accomodation with randomers and try to become friends with one of them.

Anyway as for me I recently met the guys from national school and it turns out they are all working in garages and filling stations with no qualifications apart from the leaving and could be fired at any time and I could tell they wished they were in my shoes having a great time in college on my way to becomming a teacher. Having said that they were sound and I wish them all the best for the future but it proves how insignificant their opinions really were.

Finally as for

Basically I just have no confidence at all in myself and I want to know how to change that and how to stop caring what peole think

You cant change who you are and to do this will take a lot of time and effort but if you grit your teeth and try to get through secondary school you will be able to move on with your life and never think of them again.

All I can say is good luck and from being in a similiar situation like yours you have to trust me that things will get better I mean they even start getting significantly better after junior cert as all the gobs**te guys drop out to become an apprentice and the popular Bi**hes drop out after getting pregnant. Just stay true to yourself and to hell with everyone else.

Sorry this is so long but I hope it helps and reply or send me a message if you want to ask me anything and if not good luck.

LegacyUser

OP here thank you so much for replying. It does help to know that someone else has been through this before. I think the main problem is that its my so called friends that dig at me constantly. Last year, when I was in TY and dossing along with them they got on grand with me. Same in second and third year, I messed with them instead of working and didnt get as good a junior cert as I wanted.
Now this year I've been putting my head down and studying because I need over 500 points next year and I dont want to underachieve in the leaving like I did with the junior cert. The problem is that they are going for very low point courses and its almost as if they look down on me for studying?
I dont really mind that too much, but their constant digs of me being weird and a nerd have me doubting myself. I almost feel like im lucky to have any friends at all, and im so worried I wont make friends in college! I like things like going out etc im not a total freak!I just worry because it takes me so long to be myself around people I dont know and most people dont hang around long enough to see the real me

Des Carter

Hi again OP. Its obvious that your fairly stressed out and what you need more than anything is to clear head and start looking at this from a standpoint and try to be more objective. Ill give you some advice that I think might help but Im no proffessional or anything so I dont know if it will be any good. OK there are a few different problems so I might use a number of different replies as I tend to ramble and go off on tangents.

So before I start a few points.
1. The most important thing right now is LC.
2. Im going to be brutally honest- Everything I say Ill be 100% certain of unless I say otherwise and will be the truth and finally
3. This advice will only help if I make 1 large assumption that your from a school which supports a culture of “studying and doing well in school is for nerds and losers” where the vast majority of students either drop out, take apprenticeships with builders carpenters or plumbers etc, or go to an IT to do some crappy course that they are not interested in and are only doing it, most likely cause their friends are doing it and very few go for level 8 college courses in university.
Before I go any further I need to know if this last point is accurate because the answer to this completely changes everything. Thanks.

Des Carter

Sorry but I have to disagree with sunflower in that I would advise you not to look for new friends. Now dont get me wrong I think you should deffinately try to be more outgoing but please please please leave that till you get to college. I mean going out, socialising and meeting new people is the worst thing you could do when studying and trying to get over 500 points in the leaving.

As for her current friends being toxic I agree but if I am accurate in my description above (point 3 in my second response) then they were brought up to think people who study are losers and its not their fault and if she did find more friends they will have the same opinion as thats the common thought in her school. However if she answers no and my description is inaccurate I completely agree and she needs new friends and quick.

Des Carter

Oh yes I completely agree 100% that its pure ignorance and I am from a place like that which had the same ignorant outlook and I also know that it is extremely difficult if not impossible to change that outlook. All OP can do is realise this and try to resist the temptation of following her friends to a life of hard work and misery.

As for being jealous their not they just have this idea that people who study are nerds and weird and as a result OP is getting a hard time.

Des Carter

Again I agree with you completely about OP bettering herself but i disagree with the idea of them being jealous infact I think the opposite. I think they see you as being foolish for studying and for not having the craic, messing, going out and having a good time. Of course this is complete ignorance on their part as it will only lead to trouble. so OP try to not give in to them. its onlu one year of hard study and after that you can have all the craic you want (pardon the pun) in college while their all struggling to find jobs.

LegacyUser

Just to tell you a bit about my school, we are quite close to institute of education so quite a lot of people in my school are dossers because they know they can do badly in the leaving and still go to college. I think that they honestly think that they will get good jobs from doing this whereas Im more of the opinion that they wont get anywhere because these courses dont really quilify them for much at the end of the day if you get me?
Thanks for your replys everyone, I think that Im just gonna stick it out with my friends til I finish school and hopefully try to pick better friends in college!Im in a small year so its not like I can ditch them altogether and considering ive only a year left I really cant be bothered causing a load of drama.

Des Carter

Hey Op.

I just want to say something on college first and what you said about it.

and im so worried I wont make friends in college!

OK the first, and most important thing I can tell you about college is
Dont worry about college until you’ve gotten into college.
Seriously you have enough on your plate right now in the present so dont go adding more problems by thinking about the future.

Now having said that I can guarentee you that you will be able to make friends in college. Ok Im not going to lie and the truth is that it can be difficult talking to people you haven’t met before but there will be so many people in college in comparison to secondary school that your bound to meet someone you get on with. Now the only bit you are probably thinking about is the hard to talk to people bit but if you get the course your after this problem is greatly reduced.
Let me explain: you plan on entering a course that is over 500 points. This means you will be in a course that doesnt have a huge number of people and the people who are there more than likely arent going to be in groups of friends that they have known since secondary school as the points are so high and as a result there will be a lot of people in a similiar situation than you.

Also since the points were high the vast majority of people will not drop out since they worked so hard to get there and will be determined to finish the course and as a result will be going to practically all the lectures giving you more opportunities to talk to them and more time for ye to get to know each other.

I mean it would be slightly more difficult if you were going for something like arts, commerce or science where there are over 500 people in your course with a large percent of them already in groups from secondary school and on top of that having 90% of them not actually going to any lectures at all cause they are too busy recovering from hangovers.

Another point I have to make is that right now you feel you are the only one studying and as a result its only natural that you feel like you dont fit in well the good news is that that will all change. I mean as I stated earlier your course will be a tough one (all courses over 500 points are) and no one will want to drop out and hence everyone will be studying. In other words you will be going from one place where dossing and messing is the norm and study is frowned upon to a place where study is the norm and dossing and messing is frowned upon. A complete role reversal. However the down side to this is that you may even find yourself struggling to keep up, something im guessing you have never really experience.

Anyway my point is that once you enter into an environment where studying is the norm all your thoughts about do I fit in or am I normal will dissappear. But before I finish on this topic I have to highlight what I said at the beginning and forget about college until you have gotten in because college brings a whole set of new problems that you cant afford to think about this close to the leaving OK.

Will post more later.

Des Carter

OK the next thing I need to mention is what should be your biggest concern and that is the leaving cert. OK there are two aspects to studying for the leaving and they include the physical studying - learning stuff and getting good at doing exams etc and the second part is your state of mind and your ability to focus on getting what you want. From what I gather you seem to be doing ok on the first one so Im going to start off with your state of mind.

OK here comes the brutal honesty.

All this crap about not being good enough or not being able to make friends and thinking your lucky to have friends and being worried that you look like a freak is a load of sh!t and you have to just cop on and grow up. I know there will be people saying im mean etc and that you should talk to someone etc but ignore them.

I know this sounds harsh but you have to realise that the problem is not you at all and that the real problem is with the schools mentality and as I said earlier in another post its pure ignorance. I mean your going against the grain by going to college and anyone who goes against the common beliefs and views are naturally going to have self-doubt. I mean the examples are endless.

For example When nelson mandella was serving a life inprisonment sentence for being an activist he must have thought at some stage that “Oh Im crazy I mean im a black guy serving a life sentence in aparthied South Africa and I think Ill become president and put an end to racism in this country im insane and should just give up” I mean he must have thought this at some point yet he never gave up and look what he achieved.

Another example is Eminem I mean he must have had some doubts about becoming a white rapper yet he went on to be the biggest selling artist of the 00’s.

Now Im not saying that by going for a proper course your on a par with the likes of them but the same logic applies. I mean your going against the tide and the common beliefs (which are ignorant beliefs) in order to get a better life for yourself. Lets be honest, wheather you realized it or not, when you chose to try and get into a course that was over 500 points you knew you would have to study and you knew that people would put you down for that and you knew it wasnt the done thing, you knew people would look down on you for that, you knew people would call you a nerd yet you chose to go for it regardless and that alone proves that you have more courage, more backbone, more cop on, more guts and more balls than everyone else in your school put together.

So what Im saying is that you got to get your head straight and realise that if going for PLC courses and IT courses is normal then your not normal and you should be glad your not. I mean you have to look at this from an objective point of view even if that means you have to stand up (preferably not in public) and say that yes I am a freak, yes I am a weirdo, and yes I am a fu*k-up but at least by going to college Ill become a rich freak-weirdo-fu*k-up. And then when you become rich people will accept you and then you wont be any of those things, because money tends to do this. (when I say rich I dont mean celebrity rich I mean having a good job, living in a nice house, driving a nice car with enough money to go for regular meals out and to be able to take frequent holidays rich). I mean just look at jedward. They were laughed at and bullied and now their singing with vanilla ice, have a no.1 hit and a sell-out tour of Ireland and the guys who were laughing at them would give their right arm to be in their position. Again Im not saying you are any of these things Im just making the point that even this would be better than being normal and not going to college.

So basically the world is full of people who will try to put you down and you just have to learn to ignore them and do whats best for you because your right most of them will either drop out or end up with some crappy degree and get a job working in a vodafone shop or in customer service with sh!t pay. (I know this post is a bit over the top but its just to get my point across).

Will post more later.

Des Carter

Hey OP, please let me know if this helps or if Im just talking gibberish.

Anyway for the studying aspect of the leaving there isnt much advice I can give as it depends on your subjects etc but I would advise you to take grinds in any subjects your finding hard. I would also recommend you go to one of those private schools like the leeson street institute in Dublin or Yeats college in galway etc for a week next christmas and a week in Easter. They tend to be really good. Apart from that just keep studying yourself and youll know if your on target by your summer results etc.

Will post more later.

Des Carter

Hey OP i just want to say a few words on the whole friends issue.

Ok so let me start by revealing the dirty little secret that nobody wants you to know:
Despite what you think very few friendships last and as life goes on and ye move to different colleges or get different jobs or get married and move to different areas ye will grow apart and this is true for everyone. I mean Im in college now and have lost contact with everyone that I went to playschool and primary school with and I remain friends with only 1 person I went to secondary school with.

Its only natural for friends to grow apart when ye go to different places and meet new people.

Anyway with regards your friends they seem to be extremely immature but I really dont think they mean to upset you as ye got on grand when you were dossing. As was said before they believe that they can get a proper job by going to an institute and genuinely believe that you are foolish to try and get high points. I would advise you not to confront them as your not going to change their mind and dont even try just explain to them that you really really want to do whatever course your aiming for and need to study. Tell them that you hate the fact that you have to do so much study but you have no choice and if that makes you a weirdo nerd so be it. They might start going easier on you then and your never going to know why they are putting you down so dont even think about it as they probably dont even know themselves. I mean it could be any number of reasons from because they are just pure b!*ches plain and simple to because they are all going for the same course/ to the same college and want you to go with them so yer group doesnt fall apart.

So explain to them that you have to study and apart from that ignore their comments and remain friendly with them as in if your ever taking a night off from study go out with them and have a laugh.

I hope this helps and the best of luck. If you have any other questions or comments just let me know.