I have always been considered an intelligent person. Out of my siblings, I was the first to walk and talk. I knew how to read before kindergarten, and by the end of kindergarten, I could read in both French and English, thanks to my school’s French Immersion program. In elementary school, I had a knack for spelling and could name every single state capital and president, in order. I was put in the highest reading group and often placed out of math work. When I would go around telling people that I was going to medical school when I grew up (specifically Harvard Medical School, thank you very much), no one placed any doubts in my mind. I had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and loved it when people complimented me on my intelligence. I was seen as an eager student with a lot of potential, but most importantly, I was deemed to be smart.
Fast forward to middle school and the eager, curious student in me disappeared. I could not stand going to school. My mom and older sister could go on about the fights that took place every morning, bright and early, about even going in the first place. I became incredibly anxious about school and my grades faltered in a way that did not make sense to anyone. In my 6th grade English class, I actually got in trouble because I finished a month-long book assignment in one night, but my math assignments were littered with simple errors that continuously cost me points. It seemed to my teachers and my parents that yes, I was smart, but only when I applied myself. It looked as though I was choosing when to turn on my intelligence and only using it when I liked what I was doing it. Under the crippling weight of being an “intelligent” student, my relationship with school continued to decline. No matter how hard I tried in school, my grades plateaud at mediocre, never consistently good or bad. Because of the correlation between success and effort, it came to a point where I decided there was no longer a point in trying. I wish I was kidding when I say that I stopped doing my homework or studying at all for the entirety of my sophomore year of high school. I heard comments like “you’re smart, you just need to apply yourself” and “you’re smart, you just need to focus” so consistently that I came to my own conclusion:
I must not be smart.
I had applied myself, I had tried, I had put effort in, so there was no other explanation. I carried this belief all the way to college, where it continued to ruin my self-esteem and deeply affect my education. By the end of freshman year, all of the anger, frustration and pain had reached a breaking point, and I dropped out of college.
A lot of people in my life would disagree with me when I say that I was briefly a college drop out- I ended up back in school after a semester off and I never formally withdrew, but when I left school I had no intention of being in college ever again. When I finished my second semester of college I quietly said goodbye to higher education, despite what I was telling everyone around me. At the time, I was planning on enlisting in the army as a combat medic, which seemed to be a satisfactory way of not continuing with my education, but when that fell through in early August my intention was not transferring colleges like I was telling people. In the first week of September, my former classmates were back on campus, excited about being back at school and back with friends, and I was in my bed, in the basement of my childhood home, in a deep seeded depression because I was 100% sure this was exactly where I was going to be for the rest of my life. I could barely function for three months, stuck under the weight of this believe that I was capable of nothing. I didn’t leave my house the first week I was home, because I knew that if I did, I would see someone I knew (an unfortunate side effect of small town life) and have to explain to them that I had failed. I stopped talking to most of my friends for fear that they would see me as I saw myself- stupid, a failure, and a chronic underachiever.
Luckily for me, I was incredibly blessed to find friends at work who accepted the dark cloud of a person I was at the time. I’m still shocked that I managed to actually make friends with people when I legitimately had nothing to offer as a friend, but it just goes to show how lovely they are as people. They took me as I was, appreciated me as a person, and saw me as far more than I saw myself.
I ended up back at school for the second semester of my sophomore year of college, with the same difficulties as before but with the support of people who saw me differently. It was my friend Desi who finally convinced me in October of my junior year to seek help for my problems with school. The way he approached my issues in school was completely different from anyone else in my life. The way he talked to me about therapy was ultimately the reason that I decided to go. He refused to treat me like someone who was inherently broken, but instead as a person who deserved help. It wasn’t that I was a disaster of a person who could only be fixed by professional psychiatric help (this was probably true, but not the point), but more that my life didn’t have to be as hard as I was making it. I finally went and was given a life-changing diagnosis a few weeks later.
For those who are trained in mental health or neurodivergence, it might be comically obvious what was causing my problems in school (and in life). At 20, I was finally diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. The day that I found out about my diagnosis was one of the most painful and relieving days of my life. I remember immediately thinking “so I guess I’m not stupid, there’s actually something wrong with me”. I had such little regard for myself at the time that I genuinely needed a medical professional to tell me that I wasn't an idiot. The first day that I was on medication, I cried after class because I had never been able to sit through a full class without zoning out and missing information. I still get a little emotional every time that I go to the library and can focus on work for several consecutive hours. It has been a slow process, but I'm slowly learning how to undo the years of damage to my self esteem and self confidence that being undiagnosed had done, and most importantly, redefining for myself what it means to be intelligent.
In reviewing my intellectual journey, I’ve realized how much of a problem I have with the concept of intelligence and how it’s viewed in our society. I’ve found that I often give off the impression of someone who is intelligent when I first meet people, and I genuinely want to ask them why. Is it because what I'm studying sounds hard? Is it because my career aspirations require me to be smart? Do I “sound” smart? Is it the fact that I’m in higher education, or that people assume that I get good grades? All of these notions are completely ridiculous to me, and I wish people would change what they think intelligence is.
I am intelligent because I know how to persevere and work hard. I’m intelligent because I have failed deeply and have learned from it and continued beyond it. I’m intelligent because I have a love of learning. I am intelligent and I would be intelligent without this college education, without good grades and other quantifiable measures of mental capacity.
And, most importantly, I am intelligent in spite of and because of the neurodevelopmental disorder that I have.