"But you're so much smarter than that!"

[amberswansong]

I'm smart. I've always been smart. And by this I mean academically - I pick up on concepts easily, ace tests without studying, write A papers in the two hours before they're due. I don't say this to sound pretentious or anything, it's just the way it is. And I'm pretty sure that most of you guys are the same way, because I tend to make friends

Comments

This will make no sense

[drakonlily]

I wasn't one. I was railroaded into a "smart" school, where all the kids were everything I wasn't. Extremely smart and rich and pretty. I hated my life during my education so much that I sort of fell back into sidelines.

My sperm donor liked to say that girls didn't do XYZ, and they did other things. So, in an effort to be daddy's little girl (And THAT never worked out) I stopped doing maths till college.

I realized I was rusty and changed majors.

And now I'm finally actually doing what I love... imagine that a 4.75.

But there's so much with... class that seems to leak into smarts. Have you noticed that? I was the poor kid, and thusly my expectations were lowered, forced to ground level because of my family's monetary abilities and not my brain.

I wonder what I could have done if I would have been born to a family that fostered what I could do instead of box me into "girls who don't have money do this".

Re: This will make no sense

[amberswansong]

Probably you would have been the frustrated smart kid, like the rest of us. XD I never really thought about the class angle (upper-middle-class privilege, there), but you're right. My parents had degrees and expected all of us to do well in school (and by "well" I mean I had better bring home straight A's or I was grounded) and go to college and get good-paying jobs. The fact that I'm not making $50k+/year is a source of great confusion to them - and not only have they never once asked me about grandchildren, I always got the impression when I was younger that they would have been upset with me if I'd had children before 25 at the earliest.

Re: This will make no sense

[drakonlily]

I'm the first woman in my family to graduate Highschool, let alone not have children. Usually we have them around 15 and again around 30. I've spent a lot of time learning how to get by, I know people who would proudly profess that they're a "hustler" by trade.

It was pretty much expected that I would have been a stripper or something. The fact that I'm going to try to be a doctor is a source of great confusion. Other than a small subsection of my family (The musicians with the piano store), I'm just... completely removed from them.

I confuse people with my vocabulary and people assume I'm well off. I'm not, I simply enjoyed language. Has it been a struggle for me? Of course it has been, but I've been mostly preoccupied with HOW to get by, survival made it difficult for me to really lend myself to softer things like academia.