Paused Plans and their Humbling Moments
In my tiny, college-obsessed high school community, I was the kid who ruined our 100% college-acceptance rate, and nobody really saw it coming. I was a good student (at the very least, a loud and participatory one, which the US school system tends to look on positively), had an enthusiastic smattering of extracurriculars and leadership experiences, and was an overzealous, bubbly interviewee. And no, I didn’t get suspended for drug use or some other scandal. It’s kind of boring really: I applied to 12 schools and didn’t get accepted to any of them. And I’m super glad about it!
Before you run from what surely sounds like the beginning to a privileged white girl’s “overcoming adversity” story, please know that I’m not glad because it made me “stronger” or “more confident” or taught me that my true value is in my shining heart and not in the large envelope from a prestigious liberal-arts college (although those were indeed pleasant side effects). I’m glad because I really, really needed to be humbled.
It took me a startlingly long while to learn how to think, and it is, of course, an ongoing process. The flow of rejection letters that year pinched me to critique what I thought I had learned, largely that mastery of formulas, study strategies, and SAT words required to achieve what I had been told was so important: get in to a “good” college, a college that someone with my high school experience “deserves” to go to. Not fulfilling the expectations my community had for me in that way was admittedly pretty awkward, but it was also so valuable in forcing me to see our community values in an entirely new light – I considered the less favorable aspects of this community that I really do love and cherish. Working in a coffee shop that year, I ran into a classmate’s parent who remarked judgementally – “so, you graduated from [my high school] to work here?” a comment that forced me to face the pretension that is undeniably a part of my high school community, a deeply problematic one. I was horrified and embarrassed, partially because I was made to feel ashamed about what I was doing with my life, and largely because of the ignorance that this man displayed in front of my co-workers, the disturbing way he spoke to our community’s shared notions of success, his implied commentary about what it means to graduate from a particular high school and where those of us who did “deserved” to be afterward…
“Deserving” is an interesting and dangerous concept – one that I didn’t think about very critically until that point in my life. It’s been resurfacing in increasingly nuanced ways, especially in response to this Watson situation. While I’m endlessly grateful for the love and support people have shown, I’m always caught off guard when I’m congratulated and told that I “deserve” this award. Knowing what I know now, I’m never too sure how to respond: How can I deserve such an enormous gift when there are plenty of equally (and more!) charming, brilliant people around me who deserve to go to a great college like I did eventually get to go to, who could’ve surely landed a Watson if they had been in a position to, but who never even got there because they didn’t have that kind of access? I don’t say this to be modest, I say it because it’s true, and I don’t know what to do with it.
When I did go to college, it was with the heavy awareness that despite any amount of hard work on my part, (I did work a lot harder during that round of applications), college was not my right, and I was extraordinarily lucky to be there. I also felt extraordinarily lucky to have had this year between high school and college – this period of intense, thrilling, sometimes painful growth that, despite initial awkwardness and disappointment, I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world.
Recent events have brought this time in my life back into the foreground of my mental landscape, and with a new complexity. Then and now, I held an assumption of what the following year would be like; I was full of warm glowy anticipations for a particular kind of adventure. Then and now, those mental movies are unexpectedly paused, leaving me with some time to be filled by difficult and necessary thoughts.
For obvious reasons, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about disability and my relationship to it, and 23 years into a life-long disability, I am finally owning it. Meaning not only that I’m acknowledging and expressing it as a part of my history and identity, but also in a much more frustrating and boring sense, that I’m taking ownership of the overwhelming web of doctor’s appointments, phone calls, physical therapy sessions, emerging research, the infinite miniscule and massive decisions to be made regarding my body. Doing these things on my own for the first time (if very ungracefully and imperfectly), has made me painfully aware of what my parents have done for me all along, the enormity of that. Managing a disability and navigating the bureaucratic systems required to do so is all-too-often a fight, one that involves a degree of assertiveness and a particular collection of resources that is not available to everyone. Just as people deserve access to education, they deserve access to the research, resources, and support they need to take care of their bodies and too many people do not have that access.
This reality was sticky on my mind a few months ago when my doctor pushed me to consider deferring the Watson to take care of my body. Briefly I felt frustrated and wronged that I had to suffer this massive and disappointing change of plans. Then came the humbling realization that, for the most part, I have access to what I need to take care of myself. Unlike far too many people, I had the choice not to neglect or abuse my body any more than I already have. In this light, it would be immature and absurd not to make that choice.
I have to admit that trying to hold that all these layers of awareness and gratitude within the slippery frustration of deferred plans has been awkward and messy, and I’ve often felt irritable and lost. But in recent days, a slow, subtle sensation is sneaking up on me – the intellectual knowledge that I’m extraordinarily lucky is also seeping into my feelings and attitude. (Maybe sometimes heart follows mind). I have a feeling that, in certain ways, the summer of 2014 will mimic the summer of 2009, back when I was getting ready to leave for college. That year had been bursting with new experiences – working a range of different jobs, singing in community choirs, establishing new friendships and developing old ones – and I felt all the more ready to bring this bigger, more complex version of myself into college. I hope that I’ll reach the end of this year similarly bigger – bursting with experiences I can’t even imagine yet and grateful to have had this period of intense, thrilling, sometimes painful growth that, despite its initial awkwardness and disappointment, I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world.
So these days I am working with what I’ve got in the moment to try and make something out of this unexpected bonus year. Trying to set up some way of teaching and/or taking improv classes, looking for creative jobs, considering moving to Berkeley, also considering staying in Santa Cruz, making lots ofart and devising endless (and often ridiculous) projects… also continuing to choose new themes for this blog… The other day I had the chance to catch up with Rio before he left for New York (!), and he specifically encouraged me to keep writing this year. Cheers to that! I hope this entry finds you (all you readers, whoever and wherever and however many you are) in a cozy, loved place enjoying summer as it comes to a close.
