As a high school junior and senior, all I wanted to do was graduate and leave the small town that both raised me and tore me down. I began to tell people in my senior year that I would be attending Saint Bonaventure University for Social Justice and Women’s Studies, which is not far off since developing my individualized major. I only had a few teachers commend me for this decision. The others treated my statement as a way of distancing themselves from me.
I was shocked to learn that the teacher’s aide from my fifth-grade classroom, whom I found motherly, didn’t really know me. She knew I would be attending SBU, but she didn’t know what I saw in the program I was entering.
She didn’t see the queer kid in me who needed someone to stand up and advocate for her. She didn’t see the passionate feminist I had become after engaging with my ninth-grade ELA teacher and her incredible wealth of knowledge.
She didn’t take the time to ask me what career path I saw for myself when my answer wasn’t to become a teacher like her. I no longer had her trust.
This became the case with other teachers I told from my elementary school, teachers who built me up from the beginning, encouraging me when my reading levels excelled and comforting my empathetic heart when my friends were hurt. I told my fourth-grade teacher, who I also had a special connection to, and it didn’t feel like my decision was right in her mind, either, because my initial communications path wasn’t strictly journalism.
Everyone expected me to attend a local college, likely public, and take the well-paved path to become a teacher. I have no ill feelings toward education majors at all, but I know my heart was not leading me toward this anticipated path. I didn’t want to come back to my high school to student teach and be reminded of the potential I missed out on because I followed a road laid out for me by someone else.
As I entered my sixth semester at SBU and the last full year I’ll be in undergrad, I was reminded of who I was just three years ago at this time—a gentle and often tamped-down version of who I am today. I wasn’t one to speak up against power, nor did I have the confidence to be who I was at my core.
Each time I return to my hometown, I’m reminded of who I left behind, the kind and concerned girl who couldn’t even imagine a future where her closest friends would be those made in college. I see the surprise in my peers’ eyes as they watch me blossom and flower into the most authentic me there is. I am no longer just a vision of who I want to be, but I am the grandest, most loved I’ve ever been.
I held out hope and risked quite a bit to discover I am, in fact, exactly where I need to be at this very moment. So when I’m asked, “How are you?” I can’t help but answer with a grin and say, “I’m doing quite well.”