Have you ever had the feeling like you could do so much more than you are doing right now? I think we all have. There are probably many different reasons why we do this. I remember something that happened when I was in college that made this so obvious to me.
From about sixth grade on, I always tried to blend in, I didn’t want to be the center of attention, I didn’t want to have to talk to anybody … you get the picture. I guess a lot of it was the same things that all middle school girls go through. Well to make matters worse, in about seventh grade, I was placed in an advanced math class along with about a dozen other seventh graders. The next year, we were part of a whole special team (if you’re not familiar with teams, it’s how classes are organized so that half of a grade has this set of teachers and the other half has another set of teachers). Which seems like no big deal, but it is when you’re in middle school and everything is a big deal. I couldn’t have asked for better teachers, they were still some of my most favorite teachers to this day. It was more of how the rest of the school (other students, the other teams, teachers included…) treated us. Our teachers even asked if we could all have break together and the other teams’ teachers wouldn’t agree to it. We were given grief for being “the smart team,” which we weren’t, there were all kinds of kids on the team. So from that, it felt like being smart, especially standing out for academic achievement was not something you wanted.
I would like to say it ended there, but it didn’t. In high school, we were scattered among math classes with older kids. Again, I went to class, did my work, tried to fade into the background. However, it’s not that easy to fade when the older kids talk about how you (and the other kids from my middle school math class) shouldn’t be in this class, during class, with the teacher. Now, the teacher could’ve stopped them instead of joining in with them, but she didn’t. I’ll never forget that. It’s been my mission ever since to NEVER EVER make a child feel uncomfortable in my class.
So basically, this along with a few other things, made me bushel one of the greatest gifts God gave me. If you’re reading this, don’t EVER try to make yourself seem less intelligent than you are. I’m not saying be a smarty-pants know-it-all. But don’t be ashamed of the gifts God has given you.
It wasn’t until college that I even realized I had been doing this. In one of my classes, we were talking about how and why to teach students about the Solar System. It was a typical class discussion … not much discussion. Since this was a class I actually felt comfortable in (because the professor actually made an effort to make us feel comfortable), I decided to speak up. My professor, Dr. Fortune, seemed to appreciate my input in the discussion and asked to see me after class. I thought “Oh great, this can never be good.” Instead, it was actually quite good. She asked me, “Has anybody had ever told you that you’re smart before?” I replied with a logical answer, “Yes, my mom and dad.” She challenged me further, “Besides that…” It was then that tears came to my eyes and I told her about the events that I described above. And she politely told me that I was smart and to stop acting like I wasn’t.
This exchange with Dr. Fortune is something I’ll never forget. She helped me uncover what I had been trying to hide for so long. And I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I had let others’ opinions of me rewrite who I was and how I projected myself to others. If you’re doing this, stop it right now! Be who God made you to be.
Have you ever had an experience like this?
