Photo Credit Giulia Bertelli
t my childhood home
earlier this summer, I
looked through a box
of papers my mom saved for me. There were documents from all stages of my life: Elementary school book reports with ornate covers, a 4th-grade science award, junior high Spanish honor society certificate, my high school varsity basketball letter, and so on. Nothing too exciting, honestly, but going through it was a trip through so many memories.
One stack of documents, however, caught my attention. It
was a pile of report cards from my earliest days in school, back when they were done by hand and included behavior ratings, from U (Unsatisfactory) to S (Satisfactory) to N (Needs Improvement), and a pile of comments, listed in number form, such as #4: Obeys rules, or #15: Follows directions, or #22: Does well on written assignments, or #30 Exceeds requirements. None of these comments were surprising; I'd always been well-behaved in class.
But one thing was especially shocking: My grades.
I have long suffered under the self-imposed cult of perfectionism, and one core tenet of this religion is that my grades were perfect. This turns out to not have been true.
Sure, the cards contained many A's and numbers corresponding to positive feedback, but I was surprised to see more than a few Bs. Of course, a B is nothing to be ashamed of, but they did feel like a chip in what I remembered as my unmarred Perfect Academic Record.
Sitting on the porch at my mom’s house, surrounded by plaques, medals, and certificates lauding my academic successes, I felt a little dizzy. Maybe it was the humidity, but I think it was more about the realization that perhaps the flawless student I believed myself to be was simply a persona I'd created. A persona that gave me the courage I lacked to leave home and start on my own.
At 18, I started my freshman year at Northwestern, 1200 miles from my family. I charged ahead with the enthusiasm that Persona afforded me, but deep down, I was filled with self-doubt. My four years there were challenging and successful academically, too, and I was happy at NU.
A
Mis-Self-Perception
BY HEATHER REID