언론사

Never underestimate yourself!

Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature major, Yong-cheol Lee

Most of my students at Cheongju University have the bad habit of underestimating themselves even before they start something. During my first few years of teaching, I tried to encourage my students by saying, “Don’t think that way. You can do it if you try."

However, these words did not appear to resolve the underlying and core problems behind their lack of confidence. Thus, to discontinue this vicious cycle, I highly recommended and, at times, even pushed my students to participate in various competitions.

Such competitions included an English-speaking contest, a problem-based learning contest, a debate contest, a personal essay contest, and so on. As I expected, most of my students seemed to feel incompetent and fearful even before starting. They said, “Would I be able to perform well? What if I don’t and embarrass my team?”

However, contrary to their initial expectations, all of my students who entered these competitions performed very well and won several prizes. The road to success was not easily followed, and we, myself included, needed to work very hard to get to that level.

We held many meetings through video chats and offered encouraging though sometimes critiquing comments to further improve ourselves. Through consistent and effortful work, my students improved little by little each day. At the same time, their inner confidence increased with great optimism.

Thanks to these experiences, my students came to the realization that underestimating themselves even before trying something can be detrimental to their success, and they are filled with much more potential than they think they have. So, never underestimate yourself.