I was an overachiever in high school. I maintained a 4.0 GPA until my junior year and I still managed to graduate with a 3.97. These numbers defined me.
But I escaped the strangling pressure of a perfect GPA because of my my sophomore year honors English teacher. Here’s to you, Mr. Kirkham, for denying me the terrible tragedy that would have been my valedictorian speech.
I remember you handing me back an essay which I greedily took from your hands to flip to the pencil sketched “A” that I knew I would find on the back page. You had read the draft of that essay the week before as I stood patiently by your desk and, instead of making comments on my writing, you asked me if I had a 4.0. Though I was very proud of my grades, to be such an overachiever in high school wasn’t cool, so I quietly confirmed your suspicion. Your response shocked me. “Lose it,” you declared.
I couldn’t figure out why an academic figure would tell me to purposely underachieve, to purposely give up my dream of valedictorian, to purposely relinquish the one thing that might make me stand out on my college applications. It didn’t make sense.
“Lose it,” you said. You made clear that you weren’t encouraging me to stop studying or drop out of school, just to let my GPA drop a few decimals. You explained to me that you recognized the pressure that students like me put on ourselves to maintain a number because you were one. You told me it wasn’t worth it. You told me I would feel free, free to focus on learning for the sake of learning, instead of learning for the sake of an arbitrary number.
Your logic made sense. I knew you meant well. I understood what you were telling me at a basic level. But I didn’t like it.
The next year, I forfeited my 4.0 GPA to Mr. Trussell’s honors chemistry class. One too many missed chemical equations on our daily quizzes and I had been reduced to an A-. It was a disappointment. It was also a relief, but I would’ve never admitted that at the time.
The depth of the advice you gave me didn’t hit me until years later. Now, as I approach the last semester before I graduate from college, I’ve come to realize that it was never really about the academics. It was about giving myself the room to be human.
My older and wiser brother reminded me just a few years later that my grades didn’t define me. It’s never been about the numbers or even the learning. It’s about how I see my own self-worth. If I didn’t have the label of perfect student to define myself by, then I had to come up with other ways to mark my identity. Ways more encompassing of my complexity and worth as a human being. Hard worker, compulsive list-maker and color-coder, creative and critical thinker. These descriptions speak volumes more about my dedication as a student than a number ever could.
So, here’s to you Mr. Kirkham: your star student finally understood your advice. It only took a few years and a few too many nervous breakdowns at 1 a.m. in the campus library, but I figured out the riddle. After all, I am an English major now.
