In elementary school, I was a genius.

Okay maybe not by most people's standards, but I got all As in my classes and loved school. I remember this one time in third grade, the teacher gave us an extra credit word on the spelling test. She asked us to spell "Dahlonega," the name of our town, on our paper, and I was the only one to get it right in the whole class. I was so proud of myself because I had just moved to town earlier that year and everyone else had lived there their whole lives and didn't even know how to spell it.

So this next anecdote is a little odd. I don't remember when I learned how to do long division, but when I did, I fell in love with it, like unnaturally so. The first day we started on that lesson, I went home and asked my parents for a medium sized dry erase board and some expo markers. For like two weeks after they bought me my supplies, I'd stay up past my bedtime doing long division on my white board. I wasn't studying for a test or doing homework problems; I was just coming up with random numbers and trying to solve them as fast as I could. I still really like algebra but nowhere near that extent.

Even though I left elementary school on the honor roll, I was not placed in the smart kid building in middle school. It was probably because of middle school politics, but I really have no idea because I was so oblivious in middle school. I feel like I just kind of coasted by, but I must've done well enough to get into honors classes in high school. Who really knows though; it was it was all just a three year blur.

Then high school began. It seems like so long ago, but the regrets I have about it are ever so present. I took nine AP classes, which was almost all of the academic AP courses that my school offered, and I only passed three (maybe four, but I'm pretty sure it's three) of the eight that I took the actual AP exam for. I could have done SO much better if I would have just applied myself, but I didn't. I didn't read any books. I didn't do anything before the last minute. I didn't take many notes in classes. I didn't study the notes my teachers gave me. I didn't study anything that anybody gave me. I just flew by the seat of my pants in the classroom and on those tests.

The lack of effort that I put in in high school lead to me not graduating with honors and not getting Zell Miller, which could have saved my mom and me literally thousands of dollars in college, but I was just too lazy to care. I also really didn't understand how much I was losing out on by not trying harder. I would always give myself reasons why it was okay that I got twos on over half of my AP exams. Like when I got a two on my very first AP exam, the World History one, I literally told myself that it was okay because when I retook world history in college, I'd find my future husband in that class. I didn't end up meeting him there, or anywhere for that matter. I met my girlfriend at a potluck.

Considering the lackadaisical attitude that I had towards high school, I did fairly well, with the exception of AP Calc, which I failed. (The homework wasn't due until the day of the test, so I wouldn't do it and wouldn't know anything on the test. My mom made my call my teacher and apologize for doing so bad in his class. It went to voicemail, and I left a very tearful apology. It was awkward.) BUT, I made As and Bs in everything else, and since I could put in so little effort and still achieve high grades, I never saw the need to try harder. I want to say the I have learned from my regrets from high school, but as I lay here, typing these last few words with only nine minutes until my article is due, I cannot truthfully say that much has changed since being in college, but that is another story for another day.