A Reflection on Unstructured Learning

I think the passage deals with confidence, and the tone is somewhat uneasy.  In the first paragraph it talks about "three months of self-doubt and self-ridicule."  This may be completely off, but what I took this passage to mean is that we need to be confident in preparing for the AP exam.  We can't doubt ourselves in our studying or when we're actually sitting down to take the exam.  There are statistics that show that you can perform 20% better if you feel confident in your preparation and in yourself.