Playing 'Up'

As you can see, I've been in some intense thinking modes. I just applied for a Doctoral Fellowship, a cash award to assist doctoral students with their research. It is a competitive process, where you submit your application, and wait until Spring to hear if you've been chosen from among the candidates. Whenever I'm involved in intense writing/thinking academically, I learn new things about myself. Here's my latest thought (besides 3rd time's the charm):
When I was a kid, I dreamed of being heroic. I read biographies--every one with the blue denim cover in the school library--of famous people who made a difference. That's the kind of hero I wanted to be.
While that's who I wanted to be, I had a lot of fears that held me back. What if people found I wasn't really smart? What if I couldn't perform? If I couldn't do it perfectly, I didn't want to try, at least not in public. I missed a lot.
Having a marriage fail amid a relationship dynamic that was toxic to self-worth changes a lot. Failing at a very important life and eternal task led me to rethink and rebuild who I was. As the marriage ended, I had developed a new strength that began with understanding my worth to God. I determined that I could try new things. If you don't try, you'll never know what you can do.
This carried over into my teaching career, to a point.
Let me stray for a moment into a sports metaphor to help illustrate the core of my recent thinking. In High School, Freshmen generally are restricted to Freshmen teams and aren't allowed on Junior Varsity or Varsity teams, at least in my era. A few kids who are really good, are invited to 'play up'. When you are invited to play up, there is the very real chance that you won't see much action. The choice, then, is to stay with your lower level team, but be a star, or play up, but risk being overshadowed and even outplayed by the older players while you're learning. Guess who has the opportunity to learn more? Yep, the one playin 'up'. They get to test themselves against better players. More resistance over time builds muscle.
I realized recently that my style has been to stick with what I know, to stay with the Freshmen. The old adolescent fears kept me from becoming the person making a difference. Ever since coming to Utah, I've been coming closer to leaving the fear of failure behind for good. In my doctoral program, I'm finally 'playing up'.