I have some advice to share with you as your teacher, and hopefully someone you will eventually grow to trust. Don’t let anyone measure you with their own ruler.
If I could go back and tell myself that when I was in high school (and I would have listened), I know my life would be different. I probably would have told Mrs. Watts to suck it that day in my junior year.
The hall that the counselor’s office was in was the main entry hall of our highschool, where the cold beige linoleum spattered with flecks of grey felt like it stretched a half an acre (though in reality it was probably only about thirty feet) and we all felt like we were on display in front of our peers. Good for some, but not for kids like me who would rather walk a mile around the school than be on parade in front of everyone and judged for every piece of clothing or accessory we wore that day. That hall served to be almost a lobby of sorts where the cafeteria, counselor’s office, attendance office, and main office were all in “spitting distance” of each other and it smelled like whatever we were having for lunch that day mixed with cigarette smoke from people smoking in the bathroom. Because I always felt like a moving target when cliques were banded together, I hated that hall almost as much as I hated the library hall. Even though I loved the library, I hated the library hall because it was the other wide hall of our school where jocks and cheerleaders would sit or perch on the back of the benches and throw stuff or point at you and laugh as you walked past.
Because we didn’t have internet back then, as juniors we had to go to the counselor’s office to read through stacks of books about the requirements for each college. Test scores, GPA, and class ranking requirements were listed for each school in those books that filled bookshelves stretching the width and height of the walls. Once we narrowed it down to ten or fifteen schools that seemed to look appealing and reachable, the protocol was to schedule a meeting with our counselor to proceed with the applications and transcript requests that the schools may need that we were applying to. There were three counselors, but we could only go to the counselor we were assigned to. Mine was Mrs. Watts. So I made my list of schools, and made an appointment to meet with her. And she cancelled it. So I made another appointment with her. And she cancelled it. This happened four times. The last time it happened, I saw her talking to a teacher in the corner of the office and cornered her as she tried to duck and dodge her way around me.
“Hi, I have been trying to meet with you to discuss schools. Why do you keep cancelling my appointments?”
She was a short woman, anchored to the ground by a rectangular build. And despite the fact that she had a blue skirt cinched around her waist, her figure would not have suggested that she had a waist. Her hair was gray and thin. When I blocked her exit, her shoulders dropped and she sighed as she removed her reading glasses that were barely hanging onto the edge of her nose.
“Molly, I cannot waste my time on someone that is going to end up barefoot and pregnant and working at Kroger.” Her tone was matter of fact tinged with a hint of resentment that I put her in the position of having to state to me the obvious.
I think I stood there for a good five minutes staring at the space in front of me that she had inhibited long after she left it. I could hear her greeting another student behind me happily, inviting them to come into her office and sit down.
It was no secret that I wasn’t a great student. I always tried hard, but it just took me longer to get it than it did pretty much everyone else in the class. I hated school and had since I was in elementary school and first started getting teased. The thing about growing up in a small town in the 70s and 80s was that you never get away from your tormentors. They follow you from grade, to grade, to grade and remember every bad fashion choice, every bad hairdo, the time your dad accidentally shaved your eyebrow off when he cut your bangs, and every time you escaped to the bathroom with an upset stomach. There are no fresh starts, only false ones. College was the new beginning that I was waiting for. I really didn’t care where I went, or even what I studied, I just wanted to get out. And in less than thirty seconds, she took every hope away that I had for escaping.
She measured me with her ruler. The ruler that she had come to design from years of judging her students on who would fail and who would succeed. And I let her. I didn’t march into her office and tell her how she was wrong, and what she saw on paper was not the totality of who I was. That paper didn’t show how hard I tried every year to “get” what was being taught, and how unlike most of the kids I went to school with, I didn’t have someone helping me with my homework every night or quizzing me before a test.
I stood there, and let her words soak into every pore of my body. I believed her. She was a professional, so she must know. I internalized everything she said, and when I turned to leave that office, I carried every word she said with me out the door—and continued to carry it for over twenty years.
I did find a college on my own to escape to, but I gave up my senior year before I graduated because the voice in my head of impending failure was too loud. It was so loud that I just stopped focusing on any goal beside having a family. So, I produced her prediction of me. I did get married, then pregnant, then divorced, and became a single mom. I am sure that is probably what she had in mind too that day as she was illustrating my future, but perhaps she did end up offering some restraint in not telling me everything she thought about me.
But over time, that dream came back. I always encouraged (he may say “pushed”) my son towards the goal of college. He was about to enter his freshman year of high school when I had the realization that I would be a full-fledged hypocrite if I talked him into going but never finished myself. So, I did some research and applied to go back. That was a hard call to make, but the first day was even harder. But I got through it and discovered that I really wasn’t as dumb as I always thought I was. I just learned differently so I started changing my study habits and made changes as simple as where I sat in the classroom and how many questions I asked. I got on Honor Roll for the first time in my life and finished with a 4.0 GPA. At graduation I was afraid to stop—afraid that I would wait another twenty years, so I applied for my Masters and got a teaching assistantship and scholarship. I finished that as well with a 4.0.
Now I am a professor of English and the Content and Curriculum Manager of a leading online education company. Looking back on it, I don’t hate Mrs. Watts for what she did. I hate that I listened to her. I hate that I allowed her to measure me with any ruler besides mine. My ruler has the notches of my learning style, my history, my growth and my knowledge. Hers has someone else’s notches, so it doesn’t work to measure me.
People will try to do this to you throughout your life if you let them. If you let them, they will measure you with what their textbooks say, what their family and friends have told them, or what their culture or experiences have shown them. But their rulers are marked with someone else’s marks, not yours. Bring your own ruler.