Self-efficacy

Throughout my lifetime and the multitude of experience I have had, I have developed a lot of confidence in my abilities to complete tasks and to do them well.  I have set goals for myself and been able to reach them.

That being said, this confidence in my own self-efficacy has not always been the case and has been hindered in the face of other personal characteristics, such as procrastination, and circumstances beyond my control. 

Still, in most of my life, I have set goals for myself and worked as hard as I could to achieve them.  I believe this comes from the people in my life who had faith in my abilities as well as the successes I had early in life.  In sports, I was able to succeed from an early age and continue to improve my skills in teamwork and leadership through voice and example. 

In school, I was always able to complete the tasks set in front of me.  I loved to read and write and unlike others of my classmates, those skills came more easily to me.  There were times, however, that I would fail to write a perfect paper or pass a pre-calculus test.  Even if I was discouraged in the moment, I had enough support from family, friends and teachers to hold onto a confidence in my abilities and work harder to achieve my goals.  

Things in life do not always go as planned.  I am well aware of that.  Sometimes, you have to take chances and hope for the best.  Following my graduation for UNC Chapel Hill, I was in need of a change of setting and experience.  I booked a flight and flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina for six months.  When I arrived, I had never felt so incompetent before in my life.  I could not understand the language, had no idea where I was going, and did not know a single person to help me find my way.  The entire experience of being in a new place, speaking a new language and feeling totally alone perhaps lowered my beliefs in my abilities at first.  But once I was able to successfully make friends, learn my way around the city using the subway and bus systems, and finally be able to carry on a full conversation with other people in passing, I felt like I had succeeded, regardless of all of the failures in between.  

Because of all of the experiences I have had, I know that teaching is not going to be easy.  But I also have faith in my own abilities to adapt to situations making the best of what is in front of me.  I think that we learn the most from our mistakes.  Self-efficacy is the measure of one's belief in their ability to reach their goals.  This does not mean that you do not fail.  It means that you persist through your failures, learning from the past to find success in the future.