Let me be honest. Sometimes I’m afraid that my Peace Corps service has thus far just been a huge blow to my self-esteem and my health. I may have learned and be learning a few things about teaching English as a foreign language, and about classroom management, and I may be realizing the challenges to truly understanding people from another culture and not judging them by standards and definitions of right and wrong, professional and unprofessional, good and bad, hardworking and lazy, honesty and dishonesty, from my own culture. Sometimes I’m afraid that I’ll never find the thing that I’m naturally good at, because teaching is definitely not it. Neither is being a camp counselor. At least in comparison to other people I see around me. Even though I have always wished I was THAT person. It doesn’t come naturally. I’m afraid that I’m starting to regret being a Physiological Science major. That I should have studied anthropology or sociology or even something like Latin American studies or international development studies and then added some light science-y minor to quench my interest in that department. Not that I know what I would have done with those majors, either. I’m thinking maybe there would have been things in those majors that sparked my interest more, and would have stuck with me, or maybe I would have just associated it all with school and stress and GPA and an obligation and it would be a huge jumble in my head or forgotten like all of the physiological science and comparative literature stuff is. Because maybe I’m not an intellectual. Even though I have always wished I was THAT person. Even if I was an intellectual, I most definitely do not have the conversational or social interaction skills to prove it or show it. And of course, my insecurities about those abilities make me avoid certain situations or think that I need to prepare for them and therefore put them off until I feel ‘ready’, and then I don’t learn how to deal with them and I’m back at square one. I feel like I am constantly in a struggle to prove myself, and that is exhausting. And my measurement of my success is so dependant on other people’s praise or comments and I’m sure there are people in my life that could have told me that ages ago. And if I don’t get that reassurance I interpret every glance or sideways look or whisper as something negative about me as a teacher, whether it is other teachers or students talking. And I know that’s wrong. Anyone that works with insecure teenagers knows to tell them that most of the time, that is not the case. But I’m not a teenager. I’m supposed to be acting like an adult. But I can’t seem to shake it. And I want to tell them “Don’t you know that I’m doing my best? Don’t you know that this is difficult?” But if that knowledge isn’t enough to convince me, how can it be enough to convince them? What am I missing, that everyone else my age, and even younger, has managed to figure out? And I know the answer might be “To accept themselves as they are, Neha” or maybes something harsh like “That the world doesn’t revolve around them, duh!” so what is the problem, here? Why do I want so badly to be someone that doesn’t come naturally out of me?