Boasty

In real life, the only people I feel safe bragging to are my parents. It seems unfair to do it in front of my less-apt brother, my classmates, my friends, most of whom are not in college, or my boyfriend, who has recently begun to revise his hopes for a life in academia.

So I send out to the vast void of cyberspace:
First, my Modernism professor, one of the most intelligent and respected individuals in the department, told me that it was the best essay of mine he's read in the three courses I've taken with him.
Then he said it's possibly the best undergraduate essay he's read in 28 years of teaching.

I want to write down all these different instances of praise I've gotten, cut them out, and stick them in a notebook as reminders. Because even still, I catch myself thinking, "It's too hard to focus through all this doubt."