Grade 9
MemoirWritingGabby Hamelton has lived her entire life in Hamilton, Illinois. She started writing the second she could, writing paragraphs about her favorite animals or describing fantastical adventures in her family’s woodland. She aspires to be a veterinarian for the U.S. Army but reads and writes in her free time, enjoying classic literature and historical fiction.
I hated school. “I hate school” might just be the most common phrase muttered in every fluorescent hallway in the early mornings all over the world. But, even though I’ve now reached freshman year, the year most middle schoolers have nightmares about, I like school. But what changed? Is it the idea that we can now use our phones during the day to text the friend we met while playing cops and robbers in kindergarten? Or is it because the portions at lunch that we’ve had since first grade have finally enlarged to a filling amount?
See, when I first left my mom’s beat-up SUV and stepped into the brightly colored classroom in preschool, like most kids, I was excited for school. Sadly, similarly to everyone else, that excitement died out. It fizzled out for a common reason in an abnormal way. I love learning, always have, even when I hated school. I’d be at home, asking question after question about how the world works, why dogs wag their tail, or why it looks like the moon follows us in the car, shining a brilliant yellow. When my parents eventually got tired of the endless questions, they’d teach me how to use Google or just give me a giant book filled with stories of far-off worlds with wizards and great battles. Now, could I truly understand the themes of Harry Potter’s achievements or Katniss’s feats? No, but growing an extensive vocabulary and encyclopedia about random bits of knowledge has been my pastime since I could walk. A few years later, with a galaxy backpack on my curious shoulders, I entered first grade. Throughout that entire year, the days went the exact same.
“Okay, friends, now how could you answer this multiplication problem for me?”
About seven kids raise their hands, the rest daydreaming about recess or still trying to figure out the problem with their fingers. The math teacher looks at me with an amused but sarcastic expression. She decides to choose me even though the last time I even raised my hand, or was even awake for math, she dismissed my answer. My little kid mind thought she had it out for me. I’d always raised my hand, ready to give the right answer and explain it. I never could figure out the explaining part; the methods that worked best for me weren’t what she wanted us to learn. So, my seven-year-old self had already figured out a way to deal with it. Sleep.
To combat the feeling that I had no power in how to do a single math problem—the little freedom first graders tend to have—I simply slept to pass the time. The other teacher was a bit kinder when it came to this situation. At the beginning, she’d tap my shoulder lightly and wake me, or not be so strict in the way I had to answer problems. Eventually, she figured out my stubborn seven-year-old self wasn’t having it and was going to get the work done my way. This pattern continued every day until seventh grade.
When I stepped onto the bus on that warm August morning, I already knew what the teacher thought of me. Every teacher in the past had looked at me with pity, confusion, or disdain. My grades were alright, I didn’t fight, I just never participated. I’d hurriedly do my work while the teacher was still talking and use the rest of the time to just think. I guess it was my backward way of reclaiming my power to exist how I wanted. I was clearly a very obstinate kid. Walking into that classroom that day was different.
I plopped into a desk closest to the bookshelves, and then the teacher walked in. She was different; I could immediately tell. At the start of the day, I asked a question. It wasn’t a conflicting question; it was just about whether I could use a binder instead of a bulky Trapper Keeper. That’d be a question past teachers would roll their eyes at. Instead, her eyes lit up, probably throwing all of the stories that she was told by my elementary school away. That was the first year that I could let my guard down. The kids I’ve been surrounded by my whole life truly became my peers then. I wasn’t the sleeper in the back of the class with a giant book as a pillow; I was a peer.
I made a friend, friends actually. Before then, my friends consisted of whoever played DnD online with me, or the guy at the local museum who knew every constellation and where it was by heart. Every teacher welcomed my insights with open arms. I finally felt like I had control over a majority of my life. Kids spend a large part of their upbringing in a school setting, and those surroundings shape them. A combination of both my stubbornness and my teachers’ caused me to be close-minded. Maybe, just maybe, if my teachers weren’t so hidebound to certain ideas, maybe if I had spoken up and learned to work with them and not against them, I’d have had a better experience with school. But now, it doesn’t really matter. I’m finally a leader. The leader of my own life.
This piece was originally published in No Ordinary Dreamer by 826 National.
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