1EQQ8ZzGD

teachers love you and you can't really empathize with the students
whom they don't like.
how it affects your schooling
My working style may not be perfect but I am very hard-working.
I'm proud of both my looks and my mind but doubt each
of them in different ways. For my looks, I try to not dwell on
them as much as possible. I care about dressing well and never
appearing like a slob but I'm disappointed in myself when
I spend too much time in a mirror or too much time thinking
about a compliment I've received.
When I was younger, I really didn't understand why people
seemed to find me so attractive — I didn't fit the Barbie
conventions of beauty that I was familiar with. In some ways
it was almost easier back then, because I felt insecure about
my appearance like all of my peers and considered their remarks
on how jealous they were of me to be insincere.
When I grew out of my adolescence, I finally started to
understand that in some objective way, I was very attractive
to some non-zero portion of society. even though I still don't
think of myself as beautiful in my heart-of-hearts, I've finally
acknowledged to myself that I am to other people. Although
this realization sounds very coming-of-age-y and like something
you should congratulate me on ("You're no longer an
insecure teenager who has body image issues!") it actually
led to a lot of the self-doubt about my intelligence. Before,
I struggled with the usual questions about how smart I was
— was it just because I worked really hard? — but now I had
new doubts. Was I only getting good grades because I was
pretty? Did my teachers like me more because I had a great
smile? How much did I really deserve my A+'s? My admission
to a prestigious university made me unreasonably happy.
There was no photo of me attached to the application — this
was my moment to feel validated. The paranoid voice in your
head whispers of letters of recommendation and grades and
how they could be influenced by your attractiveness but you
are deaf to them.
In college, there are occasional awkward moments with
your TAs (I was lucky enough to never have anything too
egregious with a professor). one TA for a lab told me that I
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