Self-confidence, or the lack thereof

I was watching an episode of 'Homocide: Life on the Street' with Cindy today. This was a continuation of a multi-episode story in which three of the detectives were shot while attempting to serve an arrest warrant. As it turned out the detectives were serving the warrant at the wrong apartment and the ultimate assailant became nervous and shot the detectives. The story followed the remaining detectives as they looked for and found a suspect, interrogated him, ultimately let him go, then found his dead body after his release from the police station.

As I watched the interrogation of the suspect, I watched as they belittled the suspect's lack of education and his pretended intellectualism. The suspect, played by Steve Bescemi, is an uneducated person who has scores of classic books in his apartment, such as Plato's 'Republic', Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and Marx's 'Das Kapital.' He put on the allure of education, when, in fact, he didn't even graduate from high school.

Watching the episode, it caused me to call into question my own education and intellect. I had a little moment of self-doubt which lasted past the program. A little party favor to take back to the office.

Sometimes, I question how smart I really am. I read a lot. I like to read a lot. I think about a lot of things which, perhaps, a lot of people don't think about ordinarily. I attend plays and musical performances. Cindy and I get to discuss a lot of things in politics and religion and culture. We watch movies. But really, my writing skips across the surface. When I compare my writing to others, I fail in comparison. My knowledge of basic things necessary for the daily living of my life are sometimes short of the mark.

Sometimes when I talk to others about certain topics, I find that my opinion is shallow or lacking. I remember a discussion in a seminar course I took in law school. One of the professors, a graduate of UVA, mind you, would sit in on the class. I remember that I didn't participate that much in class, whereas, the auditing professor would always share his opinion virtually every day.

I remember one class I decided to share my opinion with the class. As I spoke, the professor from UVA, who was sitting next to me, screwed up his face as if he couldn't believe what I was saying. I realized this as one of the other students began to laugh at his expression. The combination of the expression of the professor, the laughter of the student and my normal self-doubt really did a number on my self-confidence at the time.

When I was in college at W&L, I attended a lot of classes in seminar rooms. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the seminar room, where we could all contribute to the discussion. That type of atmosphere was comfortable for me. It helped, of course, that I was surrounded by a lot of very fine professors at W&L. It was troubling when the same could not be said when I was in that seminar class at law school.

That is not to say that the professor who taught that class was a bad teacher. On the contrary, he was quite fine and later became the Dean of the College. I never liked that professor who audited that class however. Damn Wahoo. He was not a very good teacher in that class and gave me my worst grade in law school. Damn Wahoo.

I guess there have been a lot of little things which have chipped away at my self-confidence over the years.