Adam, thanks a lot. That was really helpful and I will have to go through your post, a few times, really slowly, to be able to absorb everything you have said. Thanks again.

Lilly, it isn’t really about academics. One of the things that I have been really proud of (one of the things that helped me get out of the ‘darkness’) was the belief that I could do so much better than everyone else with less than half the amount of effort that they put in. On the personal front, I have and I am still doing very well, a lot better than my peers who do better than me in academics.

What I seem to lack, I think, is the personal belief in myself. I talked about getting a job in my first post. I started freelancing in my first year of college and I started doing so well that I didn’t even need a job. One of the things that most excited me about completing my studies was that I could be actually free and on my own and wouldn’t have to follow the rules that the society sets for us (like getting a job right after college, pursuing higher studies, etc). I could finally start living my life as I have wanted to and I could look forward to doing the things that I like, like pursuing a hobby (I’ve had this travel bug that has started to nibble really bad now), maybe entrepreneurship (creating jobs instead of competing for one, etc).

But I get carried away with what I’m told to do instead of what I want to do. If a friend tells me that they got hired, instead of being happy for them, I start getting anxious that I haven’t found one yet (even when I know that I haven’t tried).

Finally, I see people trying really hard and working crappy jobs their entire life just to get through (I can sense their desperation) and I end up putting myself in their place (in my head) and go through all the scenarios that I could face if I were ever stuck in something like that. I start equating my “hard work” with “plain luck” and start fearing that all that I have today may be gone in an instant or that someone else could have also done what I did and could have been better at it, only if they knew about it. The reason that I posted after so long was because of this exact reason. There are people who have the exact qualification as I do, have scored as much as I have (if not more), have gotten their degrees from a better college and are possibly more talented than I am and they still end up with crappy lives, working their whole lives with no one to even complain about it. What if that person is me?