Red Flags

I need to stop feeling so pleased with myself because I am certain it can only lead to bad, bad things. This morning, for class this evening, I wrote 2 paragraphs, each one in response to two different essays. The first one was The Lives of Brians and the other was Lawrence Weschler's Why I Can't Write Fiction. I feel as if they came out whole, like tight little gems of text ready to awe the reader. Red Flag #1: If you think it's really good the first time around, it most certainly isn't. So, now I am worried. What if we have to read them aloud? I normally don't mind reading aloud or presenting in front of people. But what if it really sucks and I don't even know it? What if it really sucks, and I am fooled into feeling like I did an awesome job? On Tuesday we did the go around the table and introduce yourself thing. The professor wanted us to talk about our aims for the class, our background and our "favorite" authors. I had it planned out in my head, all eloquent and witty. But when it was my turn my heart starts palpitating, my voice dropped in volume and the stutter reared it ugly head. I sounded like a retard, a fact confirmed by the strange look that the professor gave me and that he didn't ask me any follow up questions like he did the rest of the class.
Hopefully my suspicion of having written something terrible is wrong. This is Red Flag #2: Thinking in the back of your mind that you actually are a genius but you just don't want to admit it to yourself, is a firm indicator that you are average like everybody else.