Confidence

When I was in junior high and high school, if you would have asked any of my friends or acquaintances to pick one word to describe me, I can almost guarantee you that one of the words that they wouldn't have picked would be "confident."  In the very least, I know that it wouldn't be one of the words that I would have used to describe myself.

That began to change in college, as I slowly came out of the woodwork. My freshman year, I was quiet and shy, especially around people who I didn't know.  As I joined more and more organizations and met more people, though, I slowly became more sure of myself.  By my senior year I was a member of many, many organizations, and within many of those I was elected by my peers into leadership positions where confidence was a must.  At that point in my life, I maybe would have called myself confident.  Or at least a little confident.

When I moved to Colorado, I took the attitude of "the new girl."  I'm not sure where I read about it, but the concept made perfect sense to me.  A lot of people are nervous, and therefore reserved when they are in new situations.  That would totally have been me if I wouldn't have made the conscious decision to do exactly the opposite.  As the new girl, I never said no to an invitation, unless I absolutely had to.  I did my best to put on a smiling face and to show a likable personality.  I didn't want to put out an air of being closed off or stuck-up.  Basically, I wanted to be liked.

I know how this will sound, but I don't mean it in an egotistical way.  My strategies worked.  It took little time for me to make a little group of friends.  If you'll recall, on our first night out, Kenny called me a "fag hag" because I had a big personality and appeared confident.  One of my friends is continually telling me about how he finds how "popular" I am to be amazing, considering how new that I am.  A guy who I hardly know came up to me one day and told me that he had been observing me and noticed that people "flock" to me when I'm hanging around.  However, the most obvious showing of my confidence happened last week, when I entered the world of a 20th century woman and asked a boy on a date!  It's been very exciting, and shocking, actually. 

While all of this has obviously been happening, I haven't really been aware of it.  Aside from my conscious efforts at making friends, I didn't know that I was gaining confidence.  It took people pointing it out to me for me to fully recognize it.  I still don't feel like I outwardly act different, but maybe I do...

In any case, the idea of me being confident was questioned during my auditions last week (the ones I told you about here).  A few days before the auditions, we had mock auditions in Opera Theatre class.  They were intended to be a leg-up for those taking the class (obviously, they didn't help me).  Following the mock audition, Dr. Holman sat each of us down for feedback.

Among the things that she told me that were very useful, things like wearing a dress in a solid color, using stage-ish make-up, and choosing heels, her words to me were along these lines: "I feel like your MO in life is to come into a room with what appears to be a lack of confidence, and then to the heck out of everyone with your voice."

Needless to say, with my newly-realized confidence, I was surprised at these comments.  I assured her that I wasn't aware of her perception of my level of confidence because I really wasn't confident in my early years, and that me being confident was something new to me and had changed recently.  I also told her that I feared coming off as overly-confident (and unwarrantedly so), but that I would work on it.

So, kids.  What do you think?  Am I confident enough?  Do I need to work on it?  What's the deal here?