The Over-Worked Student

Going into high school, I was like, man I'm going to be valedictorian of my graduating class. I'm a smart kid because I'm good at math! - But that was 8th grade graduate Emily talking illogically to herself.
No, I wasn't put in all honors classes during my first year of high school, but that never bothered me. Until now.
I took honors biology which was, ya know, kind of a big deal. And I was put in geometry. Most freshman took Algebra but I took that in the 8th grade. Anyway, I felt smart. I was a straight A student in middle school and a member of the National Junior Honor Society. Nothing in my life told me I couldn't achieve that 4.0 and beyond during my entire high school career.

This past semester of college I took Sociology. One of the few things I choose to still remember from that course was the chapter on education. It taught us that the way we behave in elementary school affects our placement in middle school; our performance in middle school ultimately creates our high school schedule; and the GPA we graduate high school with will, in fact, alter the affordability of college and/ or choose the university that we attend. I never completely grasped this concept until it became clear in this chapter. We obviously don't know it when we're 8 years old but the way we choose to act then can dramatically alter our lives in the next 10 years and beyond. Reading that, I remembered blaming my (very young) self for not ultimately becoming "the smart kid" in high school. So what happened? Why did middle-school-graduate Emily have more hope than about-to-graduate-high-school-and-go-away-to-a-college-that-she-was-still-sort-of-uncertain-about Emily? Well, I'll tell ya.

Freshman year was weird. It was a year of adjustment and learning. Not just learning by cramming useless information into my brain, but learning that life is a competition. Middle school Emily was very heartbroken to find out that she was not considered "smart" in this new place. Being placed into honors history for sophomore year of course gave me a huge confidence boost--but was it enough? I was only in two high level classes (science, and now history) and still one year ahead of most of my class in math.

Sophomore year changed my life. Somehow, some way, by some weird twist of fate, I ended up sitting with four of the smartest people in my entire grade at lunch. I had been acquaintances with some of them and we had a lot of mutual friends in middle school. Long story short, we all became good friends that year. Through them (and partially my honors classes) I started to become close friends with all of the really smart kids.

After learning to hate history, I dropped the honors, completely disregarded the thought of taking AP, and stuck to what I could handle. I remember feeling like my world was crumbling underneath me everyday in that class. I couldn't handle the heartbreak of failing another test that all of my friends were getting perfect scores on. (Literally. This is no exaggeration.) I was never one to be good at studying. No matter how hard I tried--and believe me, I tried so hard--I could not retain any information. I couldn't memorize facts or tell you what any of the 44(?) presidents accomplished. Everyone in high school had me convinced that I wasn't smart just because I couldn't retain that kind of information.

I ended up taking an AP Environmental class my junior year which was the absolute worst decision of my entire life, to this day. I was definitely not made to go through that kind of pressure. Like I mentioned, this was all especially hard for me when I saw all of my closest friends taking all AP classes and still getting A's. Why couldn't I handle one?

Yeah, I was inducted to National Honor Society and National World Language Honor Society, but I never once felt smart. I went all 4 years with such a broken mentality regarding my capabilities that by the time I was a senior, I had absolutely no clue what I was going to do with my life. I'm not good at anything.

Most of my classes through high school were not easy. I could have never imagined taking them a step up into AP. However, I did have many teachers who asked why I wasn't in a higher level class. To me, this was crazy. I never scored below an A on a paper that I wrote in high school and I always picked up on every math lesson immediately. I was completely content and happy not stressing myself out and doing well in all of my classes. Why should I try and define myself as "smart" by overworking my brain and allowing more stress into my life? That was the absolute last thing I wanted. I decided AP/ honors classes would ultimately drag my GPA down to the pits of Hell and therefore dramatically limit my college entry rate. Illogical? Maybe. But not at the time.

I took a video production class my senior year solely because I needed the extra elective after dropping my history class. (We only needed 3 years of history). Despite not knowing a soul in that class and having to work on group project after group project with two sophomores I actually really, really loved it. I was good at it. Something about drawing out a movie, setting up the cameras and finding the perfect angles for the shots, and finally editing everything together was so much fun for me. I felt like I had so much freedom to express myself through editing in a studio. I remember leaving that class on my last day of high school. My teacher pulled me aside and told me never to give up video editing, which I thought was pretty weird at the time. He told me I was one of his favorite students that year. It made me feel really good. Looking at it now, I realize that I kind of took that class like a joke. Nothing was serious about it for me. I just wanted to graduate high school. I didn't know that this was something I wanted to do with my life.

Being an expert on something like video production, photoshop, photography, cooking, inventing, painting, or designing is not "good" enough to land you a spot on stage at your high school graduation as valedictorian. And that is okay. 
If I learned anything at all from high school, it's that you don't have to score perfectly on the SAT to know you're a genius.
So what, I wasn't the best in the sciences during high school. That's the beauty of college. I got to choose something I can be successful in. I'm going to be just as successful in the field of Communications as someone really good at Biology will be in their field. In my eyes, neither of us is smarter than the other.

Some people are blessed with amazing precision, accuracy, memory, and technique. These people are potential future surgeons, doctors, and nurses. Others are born with sincerity, social skills, and understanding. I think these people would make the best psychologists, guidance counselors, and personal aides.
I was given the gift of creativity and the ability to do things with my imagination. I love social media. Some people would tell me that this "obsession" is ruining my life and that I need to pick up a book and read. That's wrong to me. I love it because I understand it. I know that I can be an amazing edition to any company when I graduate college because I'll be an expert in something that I absolutely love doing. Even if I don't graduate with a degree in PR, I know for a fact that it won't be in education, chemistry, or calculus. Each and every day, every second I spend scrolling on my iPhone is learning experience for me. I'm taking glimpses into the rest of my life. What's trending on Twitter, popular on Instagram, or being raved about on Tumblr is all important to me. I like to keep up with the latest apps and know what people are talking about all over the world. Maybe I am obsessed with technology. If I was obsessed with reading text books and learning every bone in the body, I may come off as smart and determined to a lot of people. So why is this situation different? Why am I being viewed as lazy?

The pressures of high school really messed up my mentality and it's not fair that it took me 18 years to figure it all out. To this day, absolutely nothing bothers me more than being compared to someone taking all AP classes in high school. I hate to see other students looking down on themselves for this reason, too. Your potential is definitely not measured by a piece of paper with some numbers and percentages.

I could not be happier to be doing something that I love to do. I'm having a blast in college. If I had gone into Rider as a biology major, I know for sure I would not be happy. I can only pray that others will see the potential in themselves quicker than I saw it in me.