i appered to be vs it appears to me

My friend F. wrote this in his application letter: “Besides that I think the research suits me very well, since I appeared to be very good in the laboratory work for chemistry. “I told him that the sentence is wrong and it should me "it appears to me that..".The reason for this is that I am looking back and I have learned something from my past experience thus: “it appears to me"= it is clear for me NOW. "I appeared to be “, for me, can be translated with “I was lucky” and that is not the message I would like to send . My friend states that the verb to "appear" is conjugated correctly at the first person singular past tense, and he was there and did the job,so the sentence is good. Is it just a nuance issue or is it of grammatical value? English is not our native language so we both think we are right. Or are we both wrong? Help us stop the war and bring peace once again!