Imagine an exceptionally bright, hardworking student who graduates at the top of her high school class and heads off to one of those best-of-the-best colleges everyone wants to get into. She arrives at college to find that everyone around her is just as smart and dedicated as she is. In fact, some of her new classmates are even more accomplished, come from sophisticated families, and went to fancier high schools. If our student identifies too narrowly with herself as the “geeky brainiac” or “the smartest kid in the class,” as she always has, what’s going to happen to her sense of self? As she
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