When I first walked into Denver School of the Arts, it felt like a huge museum. Art all along the walls, enormous hallways, large flights of stairs leading to floors above and below. I was only 11 years old and would spend the next seven years in this giant amusement park for artists. As a short and overly excited sixth grader, the realization that I would be attending a school with people almost twice my age was terrifying. I was convinced that I’d never be around so many people at once ever again.
Each year that went by, the enormous museum that once mesmerized me lost a shade of color. The building felt smaller and at times constraining. Some of the people I started with had left and a couple new people joined. My love for the school didn’t fade, but my excitement and infatuation with it wandered away from me. It was comfortable. Everyone knew everybody. At times this small town held within four walls felt like the safest home I had ever been in, and at other times it felt suffocating. Over the seven years I spent there, I built up a reputation. A reputation that I took pride in yet was terrified at the thought of losing. I was even more terrified at the thought of having to rebuild it in a new place. I was Student Body President, Thespian Vice President, a chairperson for numerous organizations, a member of the National Honor Society, the list goes on and on. In this small school, practically everyone knew who I was. I felt like everyone was watching, waiting for me to mess up. But I didn’t. I was the biggest fish in my little pond.
Class rank wasn’t something I cared too much about. I valued my unweighted GPA and involvement in the numerous clubs I was a part of much more, at least at first. On a cool morning in December, I went out for a run. I jammed to music and did lap after lap around the track. Once I was satisfied and ready to go back home, the thought to check my class rank sprinted across my mind. I had just finished the first semester of my junior year and I knew that transcripts would be rolling soon. I logged in with my student id, anxiously hoping that the results would be refreshed. Then, I saw a bright, shiny, huge, number three. In one semester, I jumped from eleventh to third in my class. From that moment on, my class rank was at the forefront of my mind. The pressure to keep it where it was, the possibility of going farther up, how amazing it would feel to be number one! I was anal about my grades before, but that number three pushed me even farther over the edge of obsession.
Another semester in the books, and that bright shiny three transformed into a radiant two. This time, with a title: Salutatorian. Now, the thought of losing my place was unfathomable. I had to keep being perfect, no matter how impossible it was. A single A- would rip my accomplishment from me and I was far from willing to let that happen. So, I kept being perfect. I spent hours studying for exams, read over papers at least 10 times before turning them in, begged my teachers to not dock me participation points on days where I was so exhausted I could barely keep my head up. A couple weeks before graduation, I received an email from my assistant principal: “Jadeyn, please stop by my office tomorrow morning. I need to talk to you.” I immediately knew what this impromptu meeting was going to be about. The next morning, I would discover if all my hard work had paid off.
“You ended up in third.” My heart stopped. I felt so small, so insignificant. Third. That three wasn’t bright and shiny anymore. It was cold and heavy and daunting. That radiant two flew away from me faster than I could process, all because of a decimal of .005. Everyone was shocked. “I thought you were salutatorian,” “Wait, so who is?” “It was that close?!” Everyone would know soon enough, and I had to pretend like it didn’t bother me. Pretend that I wasn’t devastated and that I didn’t think it was unfair. Somehow, even after that, I was still the biggest fish. I was still the person that everyone thought of as successful and ambitious. I don’t know if that made me proud or disappointed.
CU Boulder currently has 33,246 students enrolled. My graduating class was less than 160 students. When I committed to CU, I was terrified. I considered small liberal arts schools with only around 5,000 enrolled students, but something in me told me those tiny schools wouldn’t make me happy. At those teeny tiny schools, there was a chance I could be the biggest fish, but high school taught me that being the biggest fish didn’t make me happy, and it never would. I will never be the biggest fish here. I am perfectly happy walking past strangers who will probably never know my name. I am perfectly happy to only participate in a small fraction of the clubs offered here. I am perfectly happy to do my best in my classes without pressuring myself to be the best. Though I know there will be some days where I miss feeling so big and powerful and it feels easier to fall back into my old habits, I am perfectly happy to be a little fish.