I always liked school. I mainly liked school because I had the skills to stay organized and as long as I had my Trapper Keeper and a colorful array of gel pens, I felt in control. From a young age, I wanted to be a teacher. My mom was an English professor and later a school administrator, and I would occasionally go with her to work on teacher workdays. I would sit on the floor coloring while she taught college English classes. I remember thinking that sitting around talking about stories looked like fun to me. I liked stories. Judy Blume and The Babysitters Club were my favorites.
I lost a love of reading somewhere in middle school and didn’t get it back until my junior year of high school. I think this happened because I started getting asked to read things I wasn’t interested in and I also started realizing that I couldn't read as fast as my classmates.
Let me back up…
The first thing you should know is that I was four years old when I started Kindergarten. I have a September birthday and the age cut-off for local public schools at the time was September 30th. I was always smaller than my peers, which was socially okay because I was a girl, but I got noticed as “smart” because I guess my age surprised people. As I got older, my age kept surprising people. I was 13 when I started high school, 17 when I started college, and 21 at graduation. I was 26 when I completed my Ph.D. and repeatedly got stopped for my hall pass when working as a School Psychologist in a high school that first year of my career.
At this point, I can’t imagine my story being any other way, but I do think being young impacted me. I think it made me feel that I always had something to prove. And while some saw me as “smart,” there were parts of school that were hard for me. I didn’t understand much of Chemistry and Physics and I somehow figured out a way of graduating without taking pre-Calculus. I learned to lean into my strengths, which were following the rules, staying organized, and getting really good at being a student, otherwise known as “being compliant.”
But, what I know now that I didn’t know back then is that I was experiencing more anxiety than my classmates. Over time my organization and compliance turned into perfectionism so I could avoid feeling wrong about anything. I remember feeling socially anxious for the first time in second grade when I was too scared to be wrong in front of the class. It was hard for me to understand how everyone appeared to be just fine raising their hand and talking like it was no big deal.
I started to fake being engrossed in my notes in certain subjects, avoiding eye contact, because I didn't want to get called on. That only sometimes worked.
In third grade, I tried looking at my neighbor’s paper on a spelling test and was quickly reprimanded by the teacher. One comment was all it took for my anxiety to spike and I never did that again. In fourth grade, I will never forget losing the class spelling bee on a really easy word because my mind went blank. I didn’t know then that that’s what anxiety does. It hijacks your smarts.
I Preferred Singing to Talking
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