During my
last two years of high school, I was in a program called Running Start which
allows juniors and seniors in Washington state to attend their community
colleges and earn dual credit for high school requirements and college courses.
When I heard about this opportunity as a freshman, I instantly knew it’s what I
wanted my upperclassmen years to look like.
One April
day of my senior year, I got an invitation to an awards ceremony at the high
school for being a graduating senior in the top 10%, GPA-wise, in the state. I
was really excited to get this, especially having completed the past two years
by professor’s grading rubrics, navigating higher education administration, and
the corresponding two hours of homework per credit/a week!
Later that
night, one of my closest friends picked me up for dinner. During the
conversation, she started to say something, and then hesitated. When she
finally spit it out, she told me that some of my friends had basically made up
a joke about me and essentially held this attitude of “who am I when I don’t
even go the school anymore.”
Me: who’d
never said one cruel thing behind any of their backs; me, who didn’t even know
some of them, but apparently through my friends, they knew me; me, who did this
program for herself and didn’t see the big deal; me, who had no idea where
freshman and sophomore year went along with all the fun and friends that had
gone now with.
“I made it
more of a big deal than it was, I’m sorry,” she said, trying to clean-up the
mess. But, it was one of those times when you go to clean-up the mess and you
end up spreading it all over the place. Because, this wasn’t the first time my
high school friends had gotten on me for Running Start; every time it was a claim
to joking, but behind it was actual weight. With college—even community, as the
social status gives it a misconception—came five hours of math, every night, seven
days a week in my fall term, for example, and less and less time at high school
events as the months went on. In addition, growing up without being allowed to
have social networking really put up its own iron curtain between then and now.
Thus, this comment was the ugly cherry on top of a dish that had several scoops
already.
I woke up
the next morning, still weighted down by their thoughts about me and everything
I thought I’d been doing right for the past year. No doubt I knew it would be
different, but I had no idea the connection from my high school would be cut
this severely that I felt nothing when electronic literature about graduation
came to my distant e-mail. Like their thoughts, I really didn’t feel like I
belonged in my graduating class of 2012.
My thoughts
came to a halt when my mom quietly came through the door and came to sit on my
bed; I had uncomfortably relayed their words to her after I’d gotten home from
dinner, or
sitting-with-a-plate-full-of-food-before-you-in-the-evening-but-suddenly-too-sick-to-touch/want-anything.
With tears, she was devastated that they would make me feel like I didn’t
belong.
“You had to
watch (ex-boyfriend) and (girl-he-left-me-for) every day sophomore year, you held your grace under fire, you are just as much a part of that school as
they are, you have every right to be
there!”
Laying there
static, I knew she was right; my face didn’t change as my cheek still hadn’t
left the pillow, but my mind was moving to all sorts of uncomfortable, hurt
places. And that’s when I realized why I really wasn’t going—it was them. I let
them make me feel inferior. Not only was that awards ceremony a moment for me
to shine, but really, it was a bravo to my parents, an illustration of them.
And, I would
let these now-acquaintances keep ME and all I knew I wanted to become and
always was from the award *I* earned?
How dare my sacrifice—two normal years of high
school, my time, my energy, my absence up on that high school on a hill—be
wasted; that was basically giving in to what they were saying and I walked away
with nothing in the end! How could I let these people stop me from letting my
parents celebrate their daughter and my sister, her own?
I never
understood it before, but I finally figured out how you “let” someone make you
feel a certain way. This “let” is automatic, because I didn’t give them
permission; no, this thing sat down on me and hasn’t moved. Rather, this “let”
means are you going to allow the inferiority to sit OR are you going to fight
back against it? Are you going to challenge the inferiority?
I’m so
thankful to say I did. I found the opposite of that now outsider position
Running Start put me in and changed the channel of that inferiority into
strength: I stood proudly that evening as the ONLY full-time (all my classes
taken through) Running Start student who received that award for my GPA; it
survived and was earned by college grading, not weighted by AP classes or
accomplished by busy work in regular classes. I stood there proudly, claiming
my right to be there in this school I loved so much—and filled with even more
pride for my family decorated in the stands who knew it too.
This was
absolutely the lesson I was supposed to get from this experience. Like a
follow-up question to see if you really learned the material, I was tested in
this category of owning it: throughout this school-wide ceremony, this
sophomore girl had ended up getting chosen for three different category awards
that evening. On her fourth time up, I heard a guy in our student section say
something to the effect of, “She’s up there, again?”
I took that
in, already knowing my new, passionate response:
You. Go.
Girl. (:
Good for her!
I didn’t know her, but I was beyond
proud of her. She wasn’t expecting these awards and flaunting them, she was
humble and you could tell she hadn’t done the work that goes into gaining four
awards just for her college
application. She was real.
That was the
day I lost my seeds of discrediting others. I will not sip from the chalice of
Haterade.
Whatever you
do, don’t let ANYONE take it away from you. Be proud of what you accomplish; as
long as you’re not hurting anyone or being unjust, don’t apologize for,
downgrade, or hide your achievement. There’s such a sense of self when you make
no excuses or addendums for who you are or your decisions; right or wrong, own
it. Apologize or stand firm in the right thing, but own it! People really do try to put you down when they
see you going up; it’s something they don’t have, reminding of them of the
success they want. But, that is a problem within themselves and unfortunately,
you involuntarily got caught up in their side effect.
They didn’t sacrifice, work, or
earn it—
YOU did.
Running
Start has become my greatest strength and there are no more tributaries of
apologies for it; all subsidiaries of it through playing it down or regretting
it have been closed.
“Don’t you
worry your pretty little mind/people throw rocks at things that shine…”
~ "Ours," Taylor Swift
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