So it went like this: I turned eighteen and then one morning I woke up and everything mattered. All of a sudden I was supposed to care about what my grade point average was, how good I had to do on the ACT, how many extracurricular activities I participated in, and how many scholarships I had to apply for. All of these responsibilities hit me in the face at once and it was time for me to grow up. So I trudged to school every morning at 6:30 and took the John Baylor Test Prep class and tried my best not to fall asleep. I took some crappy notes to make myself feel more ‘adulty’ and then pouted about it for the rest of the day. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I really did dread it.
So while I juggled my procrastination, homework, studying and social life, the ACT snuck up on me. I’d been dreading the ACT since the minute I heard it existed and then here I was, devoting my final year of laziness and innocence to the stupid, three-hour test that was supposed to decide my destiny…or whatever. I wasn’t big into test-taking in the first place because although I am knowledgeable and intelligent, I find myself unable to prove it with pen and paper. I don’t do well under pressure, and my brain literally starts smoking if I use it for too long.
And that’s pretty much everything that the ACT was trying to prove about me. Which isn’t good, because the ACT tells colleges and donors how much money to give me, and where I can and can’t go to school.
Even still, I woke up at six o'clock on the morning of the ACT, loaded up my sharpened pencils, drank my fancy Gatorade and hit the road. I worked my tail off, sent my brain into overdrive, checked my watch every five seconds to make sure I was good on time and got it over with. Weeks went by, and scores were released. Some of my classmates cheered over their scores of 27 and some complained because they only got a 25. I got a 20 and I wasn’t entirely surprised. I had taken the class, studied hard, and stressed about it until a week after it was over, and yet still I got a 20. No matter how hard I tried or how much I prepared, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. But I sucked it up and went in for round two. Took the class again, studied the books, got a good nights sleep, drank the fancy Gatorade on the way there and got another 20. I was discouraged. I was done.
I’d begun filling out scholarship applications and touring colleges and answering 72 million questions about my quality as a person. I tried to sell myself based on my work ethic and how much heart I put into the things that I enjoy. Many times, I wrote down that although I wasn’t active in a lot of organizations in high school, the ones that I was active in, I gave my best effort all of the time. I tried to emphasize that it was more important for me to be the very best at only what I loved, rather than be mediocre at everything society wants me to do. But colleges and scholarship donors didn’t care. They wanted numbers. They wanted to know that I was smart enough to get a 25+ on my ACT, or that my GPA was a 3.99, or that I was active in every organization available at my school. But all of that meant nothing to me. I was really successful at what I truly cared about, and I wanted to get a good education. And I never questioned whether or not I would.
Every college that I toured told me to improve my score by just one point. Their cut off line for scholarships was a 21. My mom was adamant that I take the ACT again; She even signed me up for the next one without telling me. The week of the ACT, she told me that I was taking it again and I came unglued. I told her that I was not going to be taking it ever again. Why? Because I was tired of numbers defining me.
Numbers classified me as ‘overweight’ because for being 5’9 I should have weighed no more than 163, but I weighed 170. They classified me as half the quality, because I was ranked 11th in my class out of 20. They decided that I shouldn’t get any scholarships because my ACT score was only a 20. They decided that I hadn’t worked hard enough in high school because I was only active in two organizations and therefore I didn’t go the extra mile. Numbers were controlling my life. Somehow, they’d been given the power to tell complete strangers that I am not good enough.
But let me tell you something. Numbers don’t define me. And they definitely don’t define you. Don’t let the limitations that numbers place on you decide your life success. Know that you are awesome. Do everything in your power to prove that you are greater than the numbers that may continue to hold you back throughout your life. Don’t waller in your pity and become the things that numbers determined you to be. Success is not something that can be counted; it can only be earned.
I will never question for a second if I’m as smart as the person standing next to me, because although his GPA might be higher than mine, I’ve got a heart that will carry me to every level of success if I let it. If I don’t let numbers stand in my way. I am beautiful, all 170 pounds of me. And I am smart, determined and successful in anything I put my mind to. I’ve done it all with my score of a 20, my GPA of 3.456, my seven extra pounds of weight and it was no thanks to society. It was no thanks to numbers. So whatever you do in this life, make sure you don’t let numbers define you.
