My educational experience, in verbs included a lot of bluffing, some fearing, some grappling, and self-sorting. I must admit that I bluffed in school when the expectations set for me were unreasonable by my standards. My teachers and advisors all encouraged me to join activities, and when I did; I had significantly less time for my increasing workload. I secretly envied the kids who just went home after school and, I assumed, just sat around and had plenty of time to do homework. I also had a similar envy of the kids who got to have a lot of study halls because they were not involved in any school activities. I felt that they could maybe keep up with the workload that I was behind in. I constantly would bluff on assignments, always meaning to come back to a reading that I found interesting, but always forgetting that goal when more work came. There was very little time for synthesizing, and I saw each class, regardless of discipline, as simply a list of how to get an A out of a certain teacher. By the winter, I could usually read a teacher and how they graded and then just do the minimum needed to satisfy that teaching style.
My grappling came when I was interested in the “real” lives of my teachers. I was fascinated how other adults outside of my family dealt with life situations such as paying bills, sending kids to school and college, etc. I do not know why I found this so fascinating, but it might have had to do with the secrecy with which my parents conducted every day “adult” business. When my teachers mentioned off hand how they dealt with daily life, I was very interested in what they had to say because it was more relevant to me than the subject they were teaching me. Another, more educationally relevant example from my education was the first time I was told to do original research. I was asked to write about whatever I wanted. Perhaps not so obviously, I was stumped. I took “what I had to add to the story” and ran with it. In hindsight, my paper was terrible. However, my grappling with the thought that what I thought was important and history were somehow compatible. History could be personal and interesting. I did not have to be told what was important in the world by other writers, but instead I could discern what was important by my observations and interests. This was revolutionary to me and is one of the main reasons I went on to study History and Political Science at Pitt. I feel this example of grappling helped define my educational career and I want others to encounter a similar experience.
There were some times where I feared as well. I feared exams, homework, and the feeling that my teachers did not understand me or care to. Fear was a key motivator used by many of my high school and middle school teachers both inside and outside the classroom. We were taught to fear exams just as we were taught to fear drugs, sex, and alcohol. We were seldom instructed why; however, the fear was in-your-face, all the time. Many teachers believed and still believe that education stops as soon as the student gets up from the desk. Therefore, a student is not expected to think critically like he did about F. Scott Fitzgerald the period before gym class, he is now in gym class. There is no thinking, just playing. Or, sadly, he is now at lunch. He will eat the fast food we give him, and he will learn to eat it fast. What me and the other students called “real world issues”, which basically meant anything not taught in school but that carried more importance than anything you did learn in school, were to be figured out by ourselves. Fear seemed to be the easy way out for teachers. For those that did not feel like fully explaining something, they just created fear about it.
I also experienced sorting in my academic career, but almost never came away with a positive experience. In my advanced classes, I saw how the other kids in the “track” dressed and what projects they brought into class. By high school, I determined that I did not fit in with the higher academic track. Although my test scores were high enough, I never felt that I fit in because my parents were not as rich as the parents of my classmates. I did not hang out at the pool all summer because I have been working every summer since I was 14. My school saw tracking in a bubble. They did not take into account the implied social expectations of an advanced academic track. To get a need-based scholarship was embarrassing to me because everyone knew that in order to get it, you had to make people feel sorry for you. Looking back, this is outrageous because scholarships are meant to encourage someone and congratulate them on a job well done. However, with my opportunity to attend college, I then found out that I was right. I did not fit in. I do not dress like everybody else that I see in college. I cannot go out on the weekends because I am working. My total amount in my bank accounts has sunk below $15 each of the last four years. I cannot study abroad because where would I work? I cannot take an unpaid internship because I need a full-time job in the summer in order to pay for my next semester. Now I am over it. I don’t care how the others dress or what they do; I have sorted myself into my own category. I might not belong here, but I am going to make the best out of my situation and nobody is going to be my superior based on nothing they did.
