I want to begin by stating that I have no issue saying that I am intelligent. Not even that, I’m at an advanced level of academics for my age and I’m not afraid to tell anyone that I view myself as a very smart person. However, it’s also important to say that I have achieved this level of ability because I was given every opportunity and chance to excel that I ever could have asked for. I was granted a generous amount of resources to encourage my learning and education as I matured. My intelligence, in a way, was almost ingrained into me.

I learned to read at three years old. Every year of elementary school I would go to reading time with the classes in the next year up from me because I was so far ahead of my peers. Honor Roll turned into high ability as I hit middle school, and it was then that I realized I actually had to work for the praise I was getting. Not only that, but that was when I realized I wasn’t special.

I loved the attention I got for my grades in elementary school. I was the Hermione Granger know-it-all girl who loved to answer the teacher’s questions just to prove I knew things. I thrived on it. I liked being the teacher’s pet, I liked the individualized attention, I liked the awards and the compliments, and the challenge of higher AR goals and more advanced long division problems. I liked being good at school because it was my niche. It was my thing.

Then middle school happened. I don’t know how it works for everyone else, but in my town there were five separate school districts (there are only four now) for elementary. Then, when you advanced to sixth grade, kids from all five elementary schools melded together into one middle school. It was almost a shock to me that I wasn’t the only smart kid anymore. I had 15 or more other kids in all of my high ability classes doing the same things I was doing and some were even doing it better than me. I can’t speak for all of my peers in my little Honors niche, but I’m pretty sure we all kind of felt that way at first.

It was a gradual progression of challenges through middle school. Then it’s like high school is the bully that comes up behind you and pushes you off the diving board into the deep end before you’re ready. The idea of the Honors program became more of a competition than anything else— for awards, for opportunity, for status, for scholarships— and the motivation in everyone just dropped. The older you get, the less it becomes about showcasing your abilities and presenting you with challenges and problem solving skills, and the more it becomes about seeing how much work you can handle at once and maintaining high standardized test scores to make the school look better. It was all fun and games being academically advanced, until they start expecting you to do something.

As the “smart kids” we are built up and praised all our lives to believe in how great we are, but we hit a certain point in our academics when things actually start to become hard and no one has prepared us for how to deal with that. High school has broken a lot of my peers and thrown them off of the Honors track because of how we have been conditioned to believe that our intelligence is now based off of a test score.

But how did this happen? What horrible thing happened between then and now that has conditioned so many young people to believe that all their worth is reliant on a made up number? We pile on the work and don’t stop to ask what it’s doing for us. I can almost guarantee you that the Honors kids that everyone holds to higher standards are the ones that cheat more. I’m not going to lie and tell you every assignment I’ve ever turned in was completely my own work. I’m not going to tell you I have it together, because I don’t. I’m learning with a system that teaches its educators to view themselves as the only class I have that day, so they give me as much homework as they think I need. Which would be fine… if it were true; if I didn’t have six other teachers who also thought the same thing.

As my classmates and I are approaching graduation season, I am seeing them start to deflate. I am seeing that zest for a great senior year fade from their eyes, and the dark circles accumulate underneath their eyes as they start to wish to get to bed before midnight. This is out reward for being smart. I can’t help but imagine it only gets worse from here as well.

This seems like more of a complaint than anything, although that is definitely not what I intended. I just want people to understand that the Honors kids aren’t where they are because everything is easy to them. I want you to know that there are plenty of nights where we stay up well into the morning to finish any or all of the three essays we have due the following day. We stay home “sick” from school to catch up on all the work we are drowning in. We have an emotional breakdown when a concept doesn’t make sense but the teacher doesn’t slow down to help us understand because “if we’re honor students, we should remember this from x grade, as we’ve already learned it once.” Just like everyone else, we’re dragging our feet. We want time for our families, our friends, and ourselves. We want to enjoy the sports we play or the marching band shows we perform in, without having to battle with so many academic commitments that sometimes prevent us from participating.

Before you criticize us for falling behind, from one “smart kid” among others, I want you to understand: we’re trying our hardest.