When I turned thirteen, my older sister Sarah emailed me a link to Facebook as a birthday present. At the time, this seemed like a really thoughtful and, frankly, awesome gift. We had been in PA for three years now-having moved from Ohio when I was ten- and I was itching to communicate with people my own age and not related to me by blood. I was home-schooled and lonely and Facebook was how I planned to change that.
In reality all I actually did with Facebook, as near as I can tell after hours of spelunking through my page, was to tell the three friends I had (my sister and older brother JD being two of them) that I was avoiding schoolwork by being on Facebook. Truly, an excellent beginning to my life on social media.
Fourteen was no better, though it did bring with it a change in schools. I started public school in the middle of the year, partially because my mom was fed up with me always being underfoot, and partially because I hadn't done a single math assignment for the class I was enrolled in and would have failed Algebra 1 if I had stayed in the homeschool. You can bet your bottom dollar all of my Facebook friends knew about it.
Starting in the middle of the year made certain things a little strange. For one thing, I was placed in Algebra 1, but I didn't have to learn the first units they had already covered and I had told my mom were done (but which totally weren't). To this day negative numbers are still a fuzzy area for me.
If we're being completely honest, and I like to think we can be at this point, I'm a terrible student. I put things off until the last possible second; partly because I have ADD and partly for the thrill of coming in just under the wire. I forget homework all the time, and my grades have never really mattered to me. I never had to earn my A's in high school. I did the bare minimum and because I'm an excellent tester I managed to float through three years of high school by the skin of my teeth and the strategic use of study halls. I was more focused on finally having friends than I was on learning anything. The only reason I wasn't more of a class-clown type, acting up for the attention of my peers, was thanks to my natural fear of authority figures, which led to me being a model student in-class. The only problem being that the charade fell apart rather quickly once the adults were gone.
And so, my adolescent years were pretty smooth-sailing for a while. I put in the bare minimum, and I got out the maximum of what my peers were reaching for. Straight A's and a killer social life, every high schooler's pipe dream. It didn't last, and so senior year when the rest of my classmates were picking out decorations for their new dorms, I was having panic attacks about wanting to be an English teacher even though I was failing English.
The failing grade wasn't due to a lack of knowledge or understanding. It was an essay, worth 200 points, that I had never turned in to be graded. For four months I avoided the eyes of Mr. Berrier in class and deliberately ignored the looming specter of my failing grade because the more time elapsed where I hadn't finished the essay, the less I could bear to even open the document to look at it. The shame and guilt swamped up and I couldn't handle the stress of not having it finished long enough to actually finish it. I couldn't even stand to open up the Word document, because just looking at the file shortcut made my stomach cramp up in abject misery and shame. The essay, originally due in October, only took me (measured in actual writing time) about three hours to complete. But I didn't hand it in until April. I couldn't explain to myself why I hadn't just written it, much less to the concerned guidance counselor who watched me break down in her office over the irony of my desire to be a teacher.
In the way of things it was this class that made me absolutely sure I wanted to be an English teacher. It sounds bizarre I know. If anything this class should have made me forswear English all-together and attempt to live the rest of my life as a suburban housewife with tall hedges and all the latest gossip on the neighbor's current sex scandal. But tall hedges make me nervous, and I really don't care about any of my neighbors lives, much less their sexual endeavors.
Mr. Berrier was also my Advanced Communications teacher, and for an assignment in that class we had to write a speech about our future careers. I had already kind of decided that I wanted to be an English teacher at this point, so obviously that was my topic for the speech. When we performed our speeches in Mr. Berrier's class, he sat in the back row and took notes so he could assess the speech properly. I remember that during my speech, when I first said "I want to be an English teacher", we made eye contact. I think I must have expected him to look shocked, or maybe concerned. I probably expected him to laugh at me. I didn't expect him to nod, like he had confirmed some pre-conceived notion of his, or as if he had already decided how well that would turn out for me. In my mind, this was a challenge. The gauntlet had been thrown and I was ready to fight.
"I know that test scores aren't officially released to students until tomorrow, but I wanted you to know that preliminary reports show that you received a 5 on your English Lit & Comp exam! You struggled this year with time management and it affected your marking period grades, but this really shows that you know your stuff when it comes to English, which should definitely make you feel more comfortable heading off to college as an English major!"
The above text was copied directly from his email to me. At the time of receipt I was eighteen and I took the email like a body blow. I thought he was mocking me, and making light of the genuine struggle I had endured senior year.
Looking back on it now, I realize he was not making fun of me. Mr. Berrier was an asshole, don't get me wrong. He was mean and crotchety and he had a terrible sense of humor, but he was not cruel or malicious, and he was a genuinely good teacher.
When I was a teenager, or an adolescent if you will, my main concern was the future. I wanted to be past all the hard and uncomfortable experiences that high school wrought and I wanted to be past them now. Being older now, (if only slightly), I can say that I'm immeasurably glad I didn't have the ability to simply skip ahead past these chapters of my life. Although they were hard, and at times seemed impossible, they shaped me into the person I am today. And as terrible of a cliche as that is, it is also the immutable truth.I am glad for the struggles I have endured, and for the teachers that forced them upon me. So, thank you, Mr. Berrier. You'll never know what it meant to me, but I'm glad you almost failed me.
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