When I entered my first music competition as a sophomore in high school, I planned on winning easily.

This isn’t the stuck-up statement you think it is. I was a good singer. I joined a girls’ choir when I started taking voice lessons and spent the first year as a lowly second soprano before being promoted to first soprano section leader the next fall. I wasn’t as fantastic as I thought I was, but I wasn’t bad. At all.

But I wasn’t relying on raw talent to put me in this competition’s first place like I relied on it to sight-read my way through voice lessons (shh, that’s still a secret) — I practiced endlessly. My voice teacher and I selected my two competition pieces months in advance. I went over them until I could sing them without thought. I listened as my teacher picked them apart, and then I put them back together. I memorized breathing patterns, dynamics, and phrasing. I wasn’t planning on blowing everyone away; I was certain I would blow everyone away.

The day before my audition, I was 105 percent ready, and I woke up with the worst cold I have ever had.

I did everything my voice teacher told me to do. I gargled with salt water, drank hot water and lemon juice, and blew my nose till it was raw and bleeding. But in hopes that I could burst through the wall of sickness separating me from my first-place voice, I over-practiced. The morning of my audition, I could hit the high G I needed. Fifteen minutes before I walked into the audition room, I could still reach it. Halfway through my first piece, my voice broke down completely.

I was humiliated. I was crushed. I spent the afternoon isolated in my room, crying, eating candy, doing algebra homework, and refusing to speak to anyone.

At 6:00 that evening I got a phone call telling me I’d won honorable mention.

It could have been because the judges felt bad for me. It could have been because they were experienced musicians themselves, and they could hear through my clogged throat. Either way, I should have felt ecstatic and grateful. Instead, I locked myself back in my room.

But that wasn’t failure enough for me. I entered the same competition the next year, perfectly healthy, performing for the same judges with another year of instruction behind me. I won honorable mention again.

It could have been because the competition was stiffer that year. It could have been because they didn’t separate male and female singers, something my instructor had been complaining about since the year before since most judges automatically preferred male singers in high school competitions. But I’m pretty sure it was because of me.

I was in the habit of comparing myself to others, and in a way, that’s important. But I was so focused on being better than my peers that I forgot to focus on being better than myself. Settling for beating someone else had me judging myself by others’ standards and living by others’ ideas of excellence — which is all well and good until those standards and ideas start heading in a different direction than the one I’m supposed to be facing. By the time I got my second honorable mention, I was smart enough to realize that I’d been blaming outside circumstances for my shortcomings and contenting myself with being what I thought was better than others. I thought that would get me far enough. Instead, it got me a “nice try, kid.”

Oops.

I’d like to think that I’m better at this comparison thing now, but the truth is that it’s something I’m always going to struggle with. I’m never going to win first place in focusing on beating my own record rather than someone else’s. And that’s OK. First place is great, but it’s not always the best. My honorable mention award turned out to be better than first place, because it slapped me in the face with a huge character flaw. I wouldn’t trade that honorable mention for any blue ribbon.