Moved to excel

THE HARDEST part about having smart and beautiful people around you is facing the constant challenge to be like them. If you fail, you end up in tears and get feelings of inferiority. And that was how I felt while growing up: I felt like I was always in a competition and feared that I would always fail.

At a young age, I thought my father favored my sisters because not like me, they chose books over toys. The day before my first communion, I shaved off one of my eyebrows because my classmates kept calling me the “hairiest girl” in school. While my sisters were playing, my mother would teach me the basics of spelling because my teacher told me that my classmates were a level higher than me. When I was in fourth year high school, I had a personal tutor because I was flunking math. During the recognition rights for seniors, I was left outside the hall because I did not earn any academic award. I did not pass the entrance exams to UP, Ateneo and De La Salle.

When I learned that I had flunked all those entrance exams, I spent a lot of sleepless nights crying. But eventually I got over it. I gave up asking God why my sisters and classmates were prettier, smarter, or basically achievers. I woke up one day and realized I was too hard on myself. I cared too much about how people looked at me that I forgot to appreciate and embrace my real self.

While I was failing academically, I was excelling in other areas. In our high school, I was the youngest director of a play, I was elected president of an organization, and I was helping persons with disabilities and Aetas.

Being bad in one or two areas does not mean you are bad at everything. The moment I realized I was excelling in other areas and I stopped comparing myself to others, everything fell into its right place. Our group’s thesis was nominated for best thesis, I graduated college with honors, I finished among the top five graduates in my course, and I am going to law school.

My experiences with failure are no longer a hindrance to my drive to succeed. My failures gave me the motivation to excel.

Zsarina Marie A. Sarmiento, 20, is a freshman at the Ateneo Law School.