Learning to detach my self worth from my academic standing

Growing up I was always the weird kid when it came to school. I loved it. In elementary school, I would delay going home as long as I could. My teacher in 3rd grade got so frustrated with me. Every day it would take me a good 10 minutes to gather my things and get out the door when the bell rang to go home. Some days me and my brothers would stay at the school playing on the playground. It was school property--I was still at school, even if they wouldn't let me stay inside the building.

As I got older, there were other things I'd rather do than school every day, but I absolutely loved learning. If a teacher gave me a good learning environment, I'd be their best student ever. I loved reading many of the books other people hated in English class. And I loved math. Mostly. (I'll get to the mostly). My goal in life up until about 10th, maybe 11th grade was to be a teacher. In 9th grade I decided to dual teach English and Math--a combo no one teaches. English and Math just don't mix. In my high school, it was even divided by floor. The second floor had mostly Math and science classes. The third floor had the English, history, and Language classes (and a couple odd science classes). I was going to bridge that gap! Then I decided the public school system demand too much of teachers in the areas that I find pointless and not enough in the areas I think matter. Plus, in school politics can be a nightmare for teachers. I wanted nothing to do with it!!! (opinion hasn't changed). Yet my whole life revolved around learning and school and I loved it.

I loved the academic "competition" school had. Most of my classes were too easy for me in Elementary school, so it was the competitions we had that kept me going. The only problem is I based my self worth on whether I succeeded or whether I failed. If I was close to the top, I didn't take it too bad. I didn't need the best at everything. But I had to be close to the top or else I felt like a failure. It probably was partially because I was made fun of a lot in Elementary school. On the playground, I was a nobody, but you put me in an academic situation, and I had a chance to be the best, the person the other kids were jealous of. This made any live competition where other kids were watching a high pressure situation for me. I often freeze mentally in high pressure situations. The worst was "Around the world".

Around the World was kind of like the spelling bee, but for math--and more intense. We'd make a circle, half the kids would be sitting in chairs. The other half would be standing behind them. The teacher would go from chair to chair. She (or he--I always had she's) would hold up a flash card and whichever kid, the standing or the sitting one, who answered it right got to move forward. The other one had to stay in the chair. The first person who made it all the way "around the world" won the game. I desperately wanted to win every time, but I always had a couple of really smart boys in my class who were good at math. I often ended up going against them. It scared me, literally scared me, every single time the teacher would hold up one of those cards. Would I be able to get it fast enough?? Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. I always was in the top few, but unless I was the best or the second best, it wasn't good enough. Other kids were watching. I had to be the best! If I wasn't, I was a failure. (By the way, I hate division--especially with 8's. Somehow I think I had a bad day when we played around the world division with 8's. I freeze, even though I know the answer, every single time).

In 10th grade I was in a killer honor's English class. Mr. Wood was HARD. He expected the same quality of essay at the beginning of the year as he did at the end of the year. Essays were rated on a scale of 1-9. 9 being the most amazing essay ever written (or at least dang good). The highest I ever got was a 7. It took me until 4th term to get there. I'm a creative writer and well, essays are too formatted for me. I normally only got 4 of the 5 paragraphs written in the time he gave us. But I still did great in his class. Why? because I made up for my bad essays by doing fabulously on the tests.

My favorite tests were when we did mock ACT's or SAT's. He would take old tests that were publicized and give the reading and vocabulary parts of them to us. The other kids hated those days. I was nervous the first one. But I did great. I remember when he passed it back to us and I saw my scores wondering what they meant (it was a mock ACT). He told us that overall we'd done pretty good. He said that some of us had done REALLY good, with a couple people getting 30's on the reading/understanding part. Protests and groans followed in the classroom. Most kids scores weren't that good. "Those are the kids who like getting books for Christmas." We all laughed. I blushed. I had gotten a 34 (I'm pretty sure it was that time, it might have been on another one we did). And I love getting books for Christmas. I felt so proud of myself. I was beating the competition, I was a success.

I think I'm a good example of why standardized testing doesn't work. Not because I'm bad at them, but because I'm ridiculously good at them. I was almost always in the 90th percentile in the state or nation. My 8th grade teacher showed me the results to my test scores for the state test. I got the second best score in my school (only 8th graders took it). My lowest score? Pre-reading comprehension. I thought that was ridiculous. Who needs to understand something before they read it? That's WHY you read it! So, I could safely ignore that one "low spot" and relish in my good scores, my success. If you were to pull up my state and national standardized test from Elementary school through the ACT, and even my placement test to get into UCMT, you'd get the idea that I was some amazing 4.0 student with a close to genius IQ. Both of those are wrong. I'm just good at tests. College is really where we start to see this.

The reason we're supposed to take the ACT or SAT is so a school can "judge" how well we're supposed to handle college based on our grades and that one little score. My grades were mostly A's (I had about a 3.8 when I left high school). And like I said, I'm REALLY good at standardized testing. I got a 32 on my ACT. I got into BYU even though I didn't ever graduate from high school (I was a foreign exchange student my senior year instead), and I got a scholarship my first year. I was headed for some sparkly future that never happened.

I SUCKED at college. I love learning, but I was a horrible student. My BYU GPA? 2.6 or something like that. Even if I got straight A's and finished my degree, my GPA would never hit about about a 3.4 or so. If I wanted a higher GPA, I'd have to repeat at least 6 classes. I think I was the antonym of a successful university student. My ACT proved only that I am good at standardized tests.

The 2 1/2 years I spent at BYU were really demoralizing for me. I was surrounded by people much like me--competitive, smart, good at testing, etc. I was no longer one of the "BEST". I was just one of 20,000 students. One example was my freshman year. I didn't like to talk about my ACT score because when people asked back home, they were always surprised and even jealous. I felt like I was bragging and as much as I like being the best, I hated when it was pointed out. I was with two new BYU friends and one of them brought it up. "What was yours?" one of them asked. I said 32 , expecting the same response my other friends had given. Instead I was met with. "Mine was a 33." "34." Neither of the kids were bragging, but it was kind of a slap in the face. I wasn't the best and the brightest and I never would be again. I felt like a failure. My grades didn't get better as I went further into my college career. They got worse. And I felt even worse about myself.

My fresh start came when I dropped out of BYU and went to massage therapy school. Going from BYU to a trade school was a shock for me. It was too easy. I'm sure I seemed like a know it all prick to my first class. At BYU lots of kids just answered questions. There wasn't a quiet "wait for someone else to" time. If you wanted to be noticed, you had to get the answer out first. I've done it my whole life, and shoot, I did it there. Of course my answers were right most of the time because well, studying massage books was much easier than studying American Heritage. Plus, I wanted to hide my past. I wanted to be the best massage student that had ever crossed those doors because I was a horrible BYU student. I didn't anyone to ever ask me again about my "bad" university past, so I painted a rosy picture of it and made sure they noticed me in the present. So, when my class called me out on being too...pushy....I knew they were right and tried to change. I hadn't been trying to alienate them, but I'd been succeeding by trying to treat UCMT like I would BYU. It doesn't work that way. Those two schools are TOTALLY DIFFERENT!!!

One example, my grades. I left UCMT with a 3.9 something GPA. I got 2 B's the entire time I was there. Both of them were for stupid reasons (my bad studying habits) and happened early in my program, but compared to my BYU grades I was doing amazing. I felt fabulous. I was no longer Failure Cindy, I was success Cindy. I went on to do the Master's program, receiving all A's. I left massage school feeling like I could do anything.

Still, I tied all my self worth to my Academic achievements. I was a "failure" at BYU because I was a "bad" student. I was a "success" at UCMT because I was a "good" student.

That's left me in an interesting spot. I'm no longer in school. I'm a licensed massage therapist, a wife, a primary teacher, etc. But I am not a student. I've considered going back to school several times and I've only been out of school since December. The most recent time, I was determined to redo all my "bad" classes and become that amazing student I know I can be and bring my BYU GPA up. But finances got in the way.

One week ago, I was upset. Today I'm glad. Until I can tie my self worth into MYSELF, not how I perform academically, I shouldn't go anywhere NEAR a school. Because I am not my grades. I am not what my teachers or other students think of me. I am not limited by the standards schools set, and I don't believe education is limited to those standards either (especially not the stupid standardized tests).

I learned so much at BYU. I can tell you random facts about how languages work, especially German and Arabic. I know some sign language now. I learned a lot about the facts of religion from my religion classes, especially my New Testament class (my favorite religion class I ever took and I got a C in it). I learned and so I loved BYU, even though I considered myself a failure most of the time I was there.

Education and learning are still very important to me--one of the reasons I keep considering going back to school. I've missed math. A lot. Remember me, I wanted to be a math teacher because I love math. But I don't have to go back to school to do math. I don't even need a 4 year degree. One of my friends introduced me to the Khan Academy. I've been a math monster the last 24 hours. (I did simple division until I got 93 problems in a row without messing up. Take that simple division! You don't scare me anymore--at least as much. :P). I'm not limited to the Khan Acadamy for learning either. There are thousands of non-school options out there!

I guess the point of this rant is I'm sick of the world telling me that the only way to be a success in life is to do good in school, to get a big happy degree, and follow their rules. I'm sick of telling myself that. Instead I want to announce that I am a success, here, today, at 1:50 in the morning as I write this in my pajamas, on vacation, without a full time job, a real degree, or even a high school diploma to my name. What makes me a success isn't the titles, the grades, or even the test scores (though I'd rather have someone look at those than the grades or titles!) . What makes me a success is I've never given up. I've hung on through some really hard times, but I haven't laid down and let the world trample me under it's feet. The day I do that, I'll be a failure. But as long as I'm still trying my best to learn and grow and become the best PERSON (not student) I can, nothing else matters. I'm a success.

Too often in life we judge ourselves by what other people expect of us. I'm done with that--at least until I forget today's life lesson. Today I will judge myself on my own standards of what I want and expect from myself. That complete, I want to make an announcement:

I, Cindy, am a success.