Challenge Yourself, will you?
It’s these things that build our confidence, is it not?
Two weeks ago, I was doing a presentation at school. During the presentation, we played a short video in Cantonese, since there were a couple of classmates who did not understand Cantonese, I immediately translated for them. After the lecture, the professor asked me to help out at a conference in which he was involved. It was a conference co-organised by the World Education Research Association and the Hong Kong Education Research Association. It turned out that there would be a speaker of Mandarin for one of the presentations and he was looking for someone to do simultaneous interpretation from Mandarin to English. First of all, I was flattered. Second of all, I totally did not know whether I was up for it. I am not a translation major with zero experience in translating and interpreting. It took me 2 whole days to think about it before answering him. I was extremely scared and nervous, especially given that I can be a very shy introvert who is afraid of challenges because of the fear of failing. But then, I mustered up all the courage I had and I agreed to help him, reminding myself to step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself.
The night before the presentation I had to show up at a dinner reception in order to meet the speaker and to get to know him a little bit. It was completely awkward and boring to be honest. My professor was the chairman of the association and he knew all these big guys who were all deans, directors and professors. They were sitting next to me, exchanging business cards and so on. And I was just sitting there pretending to be enjoying myself. Anyway, luckily, 2 hours went by quickly and the dinner reception did not calm me down of my anxiety. The next day I arrived an hour early nervously, hoping that nothing would go wrong. In no time, it was done. I was so relieved that it went smoothly. Although I am not a professional or excellent interpreter, I did what I could and it turned out to be quite nice.
Before the professor asked me, I had no idea that I was capable of the job, of interpreting, for an international conference. But I did. You have no idea how nervous and scared I was. But after that, I felt like I knew myself and my worth a little bit more. I am not saying that you should sign yourself up for every competition or whatsoever even if you know you obviously cannot do it. But accepting a little challenge wouldn’t hurt, would it? If I could do it, maybe you could too. As a teacher, I am happy to be trying new things out and challenging myself, or else, how do I set an example? You may get so much more in return than you imagine.