Find Your Little Pond

We all need to feel like big fish.

I was intimidated when I got to college. People talked about how they had studied Chinese and participated in Model UN when they were in high school. That was not my experience.

There were 43 in my high school graduating class in Iowa. It was not a bad school, but it was not in the same league as the high schools of many of my college peers. I worried I was far behind.

My worries soon went away. Even if my high school didn't have the laundry list of AP courses that others did, it was a place that made me feel like a big fish in a little pond. 

When there were so few people, there were many opportunities to be one of the best at something. I didn't learn Latin or AP physics, but I picked up confidence that stayed with me after I left the place.

Only years later did I learn that people have been studying the "big-fish–little-pond effect” for decades. Being a big fish can produce a higher “academic self-concept” that continues long after one has left a small pond. 

Of course, this does not mean that people who went to large schools are doomed! It also does not mean that we should never enter the big pond.

Still, we need places where people know our names and where we can share our gifts. We need to find our little ponds.