When I was in elementary school I wasn't very self confident. Maybe this is true about all people that age but I always felt like the other students around me exuded confidence. It didn't matter if they had any grounding for it they just seemed to click with everyone.
Not this guy.I spent most of my time in elementary school removed from most people, save a for a few good friends. Part of the issue was that I loved learning and was pretty good at it. So I would do projects a little bit differently or try a little bit harder. Doing that was fine because I always did well in class but I was an easy target to get picked on. Which didn't make sense to me because I wasn't doing anything to anyone, I was just invested in my work. In public school nobody really cared about what they were learning. So I was the anomaly. Being the anomaly sucks. It sucks because you can't quite figure out how everyone else seems so happy when they don't care about learning. That thought sort of stuck with me until third grade when my teacher told my parents to put me into a private school*.So the next year I started fourth grade at a The College School, a private school in St. Louis. And once that happened I got a lot more confident because the people around me cared about their schooling too. The school taught students to embrace learning about what they wanted to learn and share that with the other students. We were encouraged to discuss everything we were doing and we learned about really cool stuff. So grades four through eight had a really positive impact on my life.This is a lot like getting into advertising. You're probably at college with a bunch of people who want to go into advertising or marketing but don't seem to "get it" on some level. They look at you strange when you talk about passion or doing work that you're proud of. Especially strange when you shout at the TV when a terrible commercial comes on. Which kind of sucks because you're the anomaly and you question if you're doing the right thing.But getting into the field is a lot more like going to my private school. Everyone around you is passionate, wants to do good work and is a little peeved about what is on the TV. You start to discover that there are people who want to talk about cool stuff every day. And that is what's worth working for when you're in undergrad.Don't let being an anomaly get you down.*This teacher was a public school teacher and telling my parents to take me out of public schools was very frowned upon. I'm glad she kept her job and got them to think about sending me somewhere else. I owe her a lot.