There is one personal moment that I remember that I felt like the world was litterally mine for the taking. I suffer from depression, and one semester I was getting slammed by 400-600 pages of reading a week, two papers a week, and weekly tests. It was a nightmare. I can remember struggling to get out of bed some mornings. There were a few days that I would find the energy to wake up early and do good amounts of school work. Those days I felt powerful, like I was in control. That was nearly a years ago, but I still remember how I felt on those days.
I have always had an easy time with academia, and school has never been a challange for me. When I was 12/13 I lived in the US for a year. At the end of that schoolyear I was a straight A student. I am still proud of that achivement. Not because I think it is the hardest thing in the world to be an straight a student in 6th grade but because I landed in a new enviroment, made friends, became fluent in English (I new a lot of English when I got there - enough to be placed in a normal class but the gap from there to fluent is one I am proud to have bridged) and interigated. I was stressed out of my mind but knowng that I COULD study made me feel great. Like many smart kids I had sometimes been told that when I would need to study and try hard I would crash and burn. And I didn't. And now I am an IB student and I am seen as smart even in a class full of people who were the smartest ones in their class. My teachers think I am motivated and ambitious. That makes me feel powerful.
Also I kinda have "bipolar tendencies" and not having thrown myself down a staircase is something I am quite proud of. There was one point in my life where I could have died. And I didn't. Based on my own efforts. And I often think back to the fact that I was ready to die then and of how much better things are now. Of how many good things have happend. Of how things have gotten better day by day. And of how I was sure there wasn't anything more to live for. And there was. So I try to remind myself of that. That things did get better and they will continue to do so.