Hello dear, old blog. I have missed being able to spend time with my thoughts and you, just writing about life or experiences. Things have been busy and any extra moments I have outside of work, family and life have been spent on schoolwork. Tonight though for one of my classes, I actually got to take a break from the typical, monotonous method of answering questions! We were asked to take a couple pages to share an experience where we had to work hard for something and reaped the rewards of that hard work. This was my experience...
My oldest daughter
is eleven years old. Sometimes I still have to pinch myself to think that so
many years have slipped by between her place in life and when it was me, fresh
over the decade mark. My sixth grade year was a bubble of happiness, and in my
own nerdy way, confidence. Nestled right next to my home on 3644 Autumn Ridge
Parkway was my best friend’s house. Just a few skips between doorsteps and
there, in a world of brothers who shooed their only sister away, was someone
who understood me. We had woods to explore behind us and plenty of sidewalk to
rollerskate on in front of us. We would play Barbies for hours and make up
goofy commercials with my dad’s bulky camcorder. I was always a shy girl, but I
felt safe and secure in the little world that had been created around me.
At school I
had always tried to be a conscientious student and was eager to please. I
remember one time in the fifth grade I received a mark on my spotless behavior
card for forgetting my homework. I laid my head down on my desk and quietly
fought back tears of shame. I was humiliated and disappointed that my perfect
record had been marred. It was this conscientiousness that had led me generally
to do very well in school. Starting middle school and going into sixth grade had
been a fun transition for me. I started playing the flute, got my very first
locker, got along well with my classmates, and got used to changing classes for
each subject. I flourished and my grades were a reflection of that.
At the end of
that first year at J.J. Daniell Middle School though my parents made an
announcement. We would be leaving our red, brick house on Autumn Ridge Parkway
and our life, in the Southern United States, to move across the country to
Washington State, in the Great Northwest. We were proud of my dad for receiving
a promotion and pulled together as a family to support him. The moving truck
came, and while the movers loaded all our familiar things into the belly of the
truck to make the cross-country trek, I found that even after we unpacked,
nothing felt familiar again to me for quite some time.
It seemed that
my confidence had been left there in that red, brick house in my secure, little
bubble on Autumn Ridge Parkway, as we drove away without it. The kids at my new
school and in my new neighborhood weren’t as warm and accepting. Before I had
never thought to question myself, because I was surrounded by the love of
people who knew me and accepted me, quirks and all. Here in this new place that
I couldn’t bring myself to call home, I didn’t say the right things, I didn’t
wear the right clothes, and in my insecurity I stood too close. Desperately
wanting to fit in and to feel familiar, safe, and secure.
I became
preoccupied with this lonely feeling, but tried to put on a good face. I
yearned for acceptance, for a connection, and to feel like being me was okay. I
remember sitting in seventh grade Pre-Algebra and coming out of my fog long
enough to realize that in my pre-occupation I no longer had any idea what the
teacher was talking about. My formerly-conscientious self was falling behind. But instead of asking for
help I froze and over the next couple of years dug myself in deeper and deeper.
By ninth grade I
was failing Algebra. Our teacher was the wrestling coach and seemed to give
preferential treatment to athletes. I wasn’t an athlete. I was a ghost.
Floating through that school, but never really feeling like anyone saw me. Never
really feeling like anyone cared. After flunking Algebra, I enrolled in idiot
math for losers who couldn’t hack it in real math. We were supposed to learn
how to balance a checkbook and figure out if we could afford things. But our
freakishly tall, ruddy-faced teacher would just tell us glory-days stories from
college and make fun of his son who was an “egghead”. One day close to
Christmas, he said if we could score him a box of Cuban cigars that he would
give us an “A” in the class. It was at that moment that I officially gave up.
My teachers didn’t care if I learned a dang thing, so why should I?!
I ended up excelling
in flunking that year. I took some extra classes through BYU Independent Study
to make up for the lost credits and barely hacked it as an average student for
the next couple of years. By my Senior year though I was begging my parents to
just let me homeschool or drop out. I hated being there. I hated being a ghost.
I just wanted to drop off the map and hide.
I ended up attending a vocational program my
Senior year that gave me the high school credits I needed to graduate. But I only
made that walk across the stage in my purple cap and gown by the skin of my
teeth. For years after graduation I would wake up in a panic that it didn’t
actually happen. Dreaming that I never graduated and that I was the biggest,
dumbest loser of all time.
I went on to
use my vocational training, where I did flourish and continued to gain
knowledge within the Dental industry where I worked. This helped my confidence
and did put some of those nagging nightmares at bay. But somehow there was
always this dark place in the back of my mind that told me I was too dumb to
ever learn math.
After the birth
of my fourth child, with strained relationships in my life, and in the midst of
another difficult move, I felt myself craving, amongst the chaos of life,
something measurable that I could control, that I could take a hold of. There
was a community college about 15 minutes from my house. Scared to death by the
hauntings of my former self, but ready to bury that nagging fear once and for
all, I went and enrolled in an Algebra class.
I worked my
tail off that semester. Studying for hours on end, staying late up into the
night after a busy day of tending to my young family. I refused to take “I don’t
get this” as an acceptable answer or excuse to roadblocks in my understanding.
I set my pride aside and asked for help, even when it made me feel dumb. I
visualized that this was the end of the line. Never again would I say to myself
“I can’t do math.” When I checked my final grade at the end of the semester and
saw an “A” glowing back at me from that computer screen, a grin broke free on
my face. I felt like if I could ace Algebra, as silly and simple as that was to
some people, that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do.
At that moment
the ghost of my past left me in peace. I knew that I would have a long way to
go in my learning journey, and that there was still so much to prove to myself.
But at that moment I could feel a confidence that had long lied dormant, starting
to emerge. I could feel that fear and doubt were no longer going to be the
motivator in my life. Rather it was going to be the discovery of the capable,
smart, hard-working person that was in there all along, just waiting to be
believed in.