There is no “I can’t”!

Last Friday I held a talk at the University of York about the project I was doing all summer. The project was part of a scholarship programme that is supposed to show young students what research is all about. We were quite a variety of people. Some of us already finished their third year and are about to proceed with their Masters and one of us only just finished her A-Levels and is about to start at Cambridge. As it is common with scholarships around here half of us were from Ox-bridge and I’m not quite sure how competitive the application process really was. I only know that my academic advisor at the University of Sussex was completely convinced that I had no chance whatsoever of getting the scholarship when I applied. He told me that and I found him quite discouraging. A similar thing happened when I was having a chat with him about switching to the Master programme now instead of continuing with the undergraduate degree. He told me that I might not be happy about what I would be doing there and that I might find it too hard. He openly told me to stick with what I’ve got and be patient for it to become better. Being bored should hardly be the reason to take up something that you possibly can’t tackle.

Now, why did I feel so disheartened by his advice and why did it make me feel even worse about my situation? I went to him, because I didn’t only feel bored. No, I was generally disappointed with my situation. I came to England for a man and I had an excuse. I wanted to know how to create AI programs. I wanted to know how to program a robot. I wanted to know how to build a robot. Considering that I already had 1 1/2 degrees and a first in both it was very obvious that my sudden change in subject was … a matter of not knowing what I really wanted to do. In fact anything would have been fine if it would have involved coming to England and being with that man. And there I was. The relationship was going badly and I realized that I wasn’t happy with anything else. My degree was boring, because it wasn’t remotely challenging, my living situation was horrible – at that time I was living with 18 year old first year girls and I couldn’t stand the constant noise and silliness – I was ill most of the time and I was sad, because I wanted to go home. When I went to my academic advisor I felt so lost and I needed someone to listen to my miserable situation. I needed someone to tell me “It’s gonna be alright, you just need something challenging to do and you’re gonna be happy again”.

And what did that mean guy do? He told me, that this wouldn’t make me happy either! I didn’t speak about any personal details, so it was merely a matter of his confidence in me. He knew my record, he knew my marks and still he told me, that I couldn’t do it. And what if I really couldn’t do it? What if I would get bad marks in a Masters programme? What if I’d be too unprepared for a Master degree right now? Well, then I would at least have tried to improve my situation. I would have made a change. In retrospect I think I made some really bad calls in this year. The first bad call was coming to England in the first place. The second one was starting an Undergraduate degree instead of a Masters and the third one was not trusting myself to be good enough, because of some guy who doesn’t even know me.

When I came to York I was afraid that I couldn’t do it. I actually struggled a lot for the first few weeks and I was pretty stuck. And then … my hard work paid off. I managed to achieve the goal of the project in 8 weeks instead of 10 and now I’m spending the last two weeks doing some cool stuff with real robots instead of simulated ones. I impressed some people with my talk and in fact I’m even writing a paper about my work here and we will submit it to a workshop. It might even become my first publication! This guy thought I wouldn’t even get the placement and now I’m actually really successful with it!

All this taught me something: The biggest mistake is to not have any trust in your own abilities.

Within only one year I have gained enough skills and knowledge to not only be one of the best students in my year, but also to successfully complete a research project with only a bit of guidance by my supervisor. We were both happy with quite a free working environment: He let me go my way, explore my ideas and he always let me do the work. He never told me how to do stuff, but only explored options together with me. It worked out very well and I enjoyed it a lot to work together with him.

If I can successfully complete this project, which was explicitly stated as a project for master students, why shouldn’t I be able to do a Masters? Why should I be afraid of bigger coursework projects? I didn’t believe in myself and with that I made my life much more complicated than it could have been. Worrying about the future and about your abilities will make you stop yourself from trying. Trying and failing is much better than never trying at all!

For the past few year I always said “I can do what I want, if I really want it!”, but somehow I failed to believe myself! I was afraid that I couldn’t live up to the high standards I set for myself. I sabotaged myself with that fear without realizing it. It weren’t the high standards that sabotaged me, no, it was my own wrong assessment of my own abilities.

There is no “I can’t”! You can, if you believe in yourself and work hard for it!

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