Confessions of a (Former) Straight A Student
How to Rise above Other People's Expectations
Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash
September always has a way of ushering in new things while leaving behind others. Saying goodbye to the warm weather, freedom, and leisure of summer is never easy for anyone but in the midst of my quiet mourning of summer, I can’t help but remember all the good things that are rushing to replace it. I’m already looking forward to the yellows, oranges, and browns of the changing leaves, the brisk cool air, pie season, Halloween, and Thanksgiving. With all the gifts September brings with it, there is also one that makes the stomach of every student and parent churn with dread; the start of a new school year.
Coming back to my college campus after summer vacation is like witnessing an institution wake up from a very good nap. The walkways and streets are alive and busy and the air is ripe with excitement, motivation, possibility, and for me, the anxiousness and dread that comes with meeting my parent’s expectations.
Since childhood, my West African parents made it very clear their desire for me and my sister to rise to their standard of academic excellence. While my sister thrived in STEM and English I tended to succeed in English and struggle greatly in STEM. My elementary school years were spent dedicated hours to making sure that succeeded academically and more time enduring scoldings and all sorts of vitriol about why I wasn’t.
I learned very early on about the weight and importance that other people’s expectations carried and what could happen to me if they weren’t met. It would mean that I would hurt people who would hurt me in return. As I worked tirelessly to meet the expectations of my parents, I learned to whittle myself away until all I was was what they wanted of me: a straight A student. From elementary school to high school I drowned myself in what they thought of my grades. My self-esteem and self-worth were tied to them. Anything less than perfect left me depressed and feeling worthless and undeserving. Straight As however left me on cloud 9.
It continued like that until my freshman year of college when I finally hit rock bottom. I struggled to adjust to college academics which showed on my first report card in which I earned my first C in Precalculus and a B+. This of course was unacceptable to my parents and after a phone call with my father, I felt my heart break and tears stream down my face. As I allowed feelings of uselessness and worthlessness to overwhelm me, I remember a quiet feeling of exhaustion accompanying them. Deep down I knew that I couldn’t keep riding this rollercoaster, I couldn’t keep slaving away for approval that would disappear as soon as a grade slipped, and I couldn’t keep doing this. So even when I went home that Winter Break to parents that loudly and quietly fumed about my low grades, even as I felt distraught, I kept feeding that voice that kept saying ‘enough is enough, enough is enough, enough is enough.’
A belief that I was introduced to that same year was that when someone will only stop feeding a dysfunctional pattern when they are sick of it and not a second sooner. Once I decided I was sick of it I made the conscious decision to stop it. To stop allowing my parent’s disappointments and the snarky and passive-aggressive comments that followed to shake and break me. I stopped begging them to understand that I really was trying despite the letter on the transcript. I stopped allowing their academic expectations that were influenced by their own trauma and insecurities to wear on me. I just stopped it.
It’s funny how quickly things change when you decide they have to and once I did that, I had nowhere to go but inwards. I learned to contemplate my own thoughts and feelings about my academic performance and for the first time, allowed myself to truly believe what I thought of it. With that, I began to set my own expectations and develop my own mindset, not just about school but about failure. Although I should strive for the highest grades possible, a B wasn’t the end of the world. If I noticed my performance improving in a class or my exam grade was better than the previous one, I decided that was worth celebrating even if the end result wasn’t an A. When I fell short of my desire for an A, I reflected on where I went wrong and what I could improve going forward. Slowly but surely, I learned to move past the gilded cage of perfectionism and decided that my well-being, my sanity, and my psychological and emotional independence were more important than any grade or anyone’s opinions of that grade ever will be.
Fast forward two years later and when I relish in my hard-won freedom I can’t help but remember all the ways I’ve allowed others’ expectations of me to decide who I get to be. Just like my parents taught me I had to be a straight-A student, my friends told me I was a strong person who didn’t take shit, and the world told me that as a black woman I needed to have certain beliefs and fight for certain causes. It was like I was tangled in strings put on me by other people that I didn’t realize were there. It turns out, not falling prey to other people’s expectations is a job that requires you to have the eyes to see these strings, the scissors to cut them off, and the courage to leave them on the floor and walk the fuck away.