In the second grade, I started public school. Everyone around me was reading and writing. Everyone bragged about learning how to read when they were only 5, some even two. Everyone pressed me to see how I matched up. Everyone knew what they were doing. Am I stupid? Moronic? Vacuous? Idiotic? Unintelligent? I was staring at undecipherable lines and curves that held no meaning to me. At the age of seven, I was struggling with what seemed to be common knowledge to all but me. I was behind, they said. What’s worse than being behind? That makes me not as good as everyone else doesn’t it? It means everyone is smarter than me. Everyone knows more than me! Maybe I’m dyslexic. My mom made all the excuses she could for me. She promised that I was smart …show more content…
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there. In fact, I made friends easily. I got along with everyone else for the most part. At recess people asked to push me on the swings or encouraged me to come play house with them. Being new wasn’t bad, and the transition to public school wasn’t bad. I had tried to just avoid the academic side to school, as silly as it sounds. I loved being around the other kids and having friends, but I hated being compared to them. That day, however, I couldn’t shy away from the intellectualism that school revolved around. That day my fatuousness was painfully evident, and I couldn’t stand being academically inferior to my peers or even my educators anymores. I was convinced that I could be just as good as the rest of them. I could read the biggest book, know the most words, have the best essay, be the most extraordinary student. I was going to excel beyond the expectations of the classroom, and write my own guidelines to what was expected of me. I stayed in every recess, and studied the grammar test. I sat on the bus, and studied the vocabulary words. I came home, and studied the spelling test. I raised my hand for every question, and even when I was wrong I held my head high because I wasn’t finding any of the answers staring at my