Maybe I'm Stupid

There are words inside of my head that have been very difficult to get rid of. Okay, there might be several, but there are four in particular that I have not been able to shake. 

I have a small memory from the inside of my middle school science classroom. In it, I hear myself say something out loud. “Maybe I’m stupid,” I said. And the teacher replied, “Well, maybe you are.” Some of my classmates snickered, but that is all I remember.

 

It is difficult to think about forgiving this teacher, who made me believe for years that I wasn’t smart. I don’t think I truly believed I was smart until graduate school; when friends and fellow writers told me that I was smart.

 

I was never a Governor Scholar. I was never a straight-A student. I was, maybe, apathetic, which is how high schoolers are supposed to be anyway. A classic case of not living up to my potential. I don’t think that’s necessarily true….But I fucking definitely did not take any AP courses. There was a small part of me that wanted to be a part of the Quick Recall team in the ninth grade. I sat it once in a practice session and all I could think was, HOW DO THESE PEOPLE KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT THE PERIODIC TABLE? JESUS. I wanted to know things, but the classroom got in my way. The classroom is a terrifying place for someone, like me, who was so shy that when called on in class I would just sit there and wait for the teacher to move on. Maybe if I don’t move no one will know I am here. Much like my approach to dating emotionally unavailable men throughout my twenties. 

 

Of course, I now realize that making good grades in high school and/or college doesn’t make anyone smart, necessarily. I graduated from a small private liberal high school and if you were to ask me now if I would collectively use smart as a modifier for the majority of my former classmates, well, it’s probably best I reply with No Comment. They just knew how to work the system. 

 

But am I mistaking smartness for kindness? Is there perhaps a connection between the two? Do empathy and compassion factor into intellect? If I were to, say, use the Trump presidency as an example here then I would say FUCK YES, THEY DO. But I digress. 

 

I have a privileged background. Iknowdis. I often reflect on that privilege and why I had such a difficult time finding ground to walk on during my tenure at the middle school and high schools I attended. This particular system was supposed to mean access to better education, not having a teacher telling you that you might be stupid.

 

I was thinking about being an English major in college, but fucked up when I transferred to a local private college. I didn’t do very well in my classes because I was grieving the loss of my first friend and was fucking sad. AND people suddenly wanted to be my friend. I learned how to drink, it was a catholic college after all. Anyway, my grades sucked. Like, Animal House bad. Eventually, I started taking creative writing classes and finally found the ground I had been looking for. These were my people. 

 

The advantage that graduate school had over college was that it did not feel mandatory. Less of a rite of passage, more of a personal passage. It was something I wanted for myself and I WANTED to study creative writing. I liked the idea of being able to concentrate on something that interested me. The program I got into was low-residency, which meant I got to go to Maine twice a year for two weeks at a time.

 

I was welcomed into the program with wide, open arms and it was curated with people who wanted to be there. People who shared the same passions and liked to talk about writers and books. I couldn’t possibly be stupid if I had gotten the opportunity to be around these people. 

 

Two and a half years later, I received a piece of paper telling me I had completed a Master of Fine Arts. SUCK ON THAT MRS. SZABO! I still have this conversation in my head sometimes. As if I have something to prove to her, however many years later. 

 

I saw an article headline once that said swearing is a sign of intelligence. Of fucking course it is. Where ever you are, Mrs. Szabo, I hope you can still hear my best friend and me screaming the lyrics to Joey McIntyre’s “Stay the Same” in the elevator before going to the Science Olympiad competition where we got fucking second place for (mostly) making up names for artifacts and other useless shit no one ever needs to know. 

 

SNARFIN DARFIN 4 EVER.