Settling for Mediocrity

I never thought my brother could be that calculating, until last month.

He's taking MS subjects in my school, so he gets to visit me once in a while. As my mom asked him how I was doing in school, he said that I would definitely pass every subject I took if I wanted to. Okay, that was flattering! But I think it was a really bad idea telling her that. Now she'd probably think I haven’t done my best here!

So he has this theory that I'm exceptionally brilliant. At this point, I know you're probably thinking that I'm so full of myself, but hey, don’t take this too seriously, we all know that for MOST cases, family always thinks highly of us. Here's the glitch; having my genius overlooked since the flood—in loads of circumstances that you couldn’t possibly imagine, he believed that I have developed this defense mechanism of mediocrity and turned out to be an underdog! Okay, that really hurt!

I've heard that theory before, from my past teachers and some friends. Could they possibly be right about me and I am just in denial? I have no idea. It made sense though. Settling for mediocrity alleviates the risks for frustrations. When you fail, wouldn’t it hurt worse if you studied real hard? It's definitely a dead end. Conversely, if you haven’t squeezed your brain out yet, you get to think 'what if?', and still have hope. Now, I'm becoming such a pessimist.

Yes, interest is indeed an important factor for me! I don’t learn things I'm not interested in. Then again, I'm not a prodigy that could actually choose not to excel! I want to excel you know, I just can't!

Despite that, I'm perfectly happy where I stand right now. I have put up with the engineering scheme well enough and still have a life! As for that hypothesis above, keep it bro!