Spirited Script

Growing up, I was the smart kid. When I say that, I don’t mean to say I was smarter than everyone else. Rather, I was the one who had the reputation for being smart. I was the recluse, had few friends (though they were very good friends), and got good grades. In short, I fit the stereotype.

If you looked around the class, you would find plenty of people who were as smart as me academically. They had other characteristics that garnered more attention though, so smart kid fell to me. At first, I really liked being the smart kid. After all, I was interested in how things work, and figuring that out always gave me a sense of accomplishment. With the free time I had not being out with friends all the time, it was a simple matter to put in the effort to do well on my work.

Now, this reputation of being the smart kid followed me through middle school and high school. The thing is, I struggled just like everyone else. Yes, I was good at math and most sciences, but everything else was quite a lot of effort for a very long time. And in my experience, most people have one or two subjects that they do well with, so that’s also quite normal. But, with the lack of a social life, I had lots of time to put into getting work done well.

Over time though, I developed more of a social life. This still didn’t get in the way of me getting my work done, as I was still quite a recluse, so I saw most of my friends fairly infrequently.

Towards the end of high school though, there was a change. I decided I wanted a social life, and that was going to be a priority for me. I stepped out a bit, took some chances when it came to making friends, and put them before anything else I might have to do. At first, this was easy, and I had the time for them and for work and everything went on as normal, except I was seeing friends a lot more often.

Of course, this couldn’t last. There came a point in time where I had to choose what to put first, my friends or my schoolwork. Since I’d already decided that my friends would be my first priority from that point on, I put my schoolwork on hold. Which is to say, I did the work without putting in much effort, and decided I’d be happy with B’s knowing that I wasn’t trying on the work. If I thought a teacher wasn’t grading an assignment, I didn’t do it at all. I ended up with a couple of C’s due to these strategies, but that was ok, because what I was really interested in was my social life.

Due to my focus on my social life, it picked up a lot, and I learned a lot in the short time I had left in school. Oddly enough, even with my slipping grades, I maintained, without trying, my reputation as one of the smart kids. I guess once you have a reputation, it follows you for a long time.

In fact, I chose my college based first around where I thought I could grow the most socially. Naturally, I also wanted to get a good academic education, since that’s what I was paying for, but my social goals still were first in my mind. This meant two things: I had to choose a school away from home, and I decided to choose a school with a reputation for being a party school.

There was a purpose behind that choice, and it wasn’t to party away from home so my parents wouldn’t find out. Rather, I chose to be away from home because it would force me to make new friends on my own, something I hadn’t had to do since middle school. I chose to go to a “party school” because, while I wasn’t looking to go to parties all the time, I figured it would still have a lively community, something that would be helpful in making friends.

It turns out that this was right, and I made a lot of friends very quickly once I arrived. So, I achieved my primary goal of making a lot of friends, and I still graduated and earned my degree while doing so. Perhaps this isn’t the standard reasoning people use while choosing a school, but it worked for me, and I got what I needed out of my education on both social and academic fronts.

So what’s my point in saying all of this? Well, first, and least noticeable in this piece, is that your reputation follows you through the school system up through high school. Once it’s established, there isn’t much you can do about it unless you’re vocal enough to change it. I didn’t care one way or the other, so I didn’t bother.

My next point is that those who everyone perceives as smart or talented usually work for it, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Just because it doesn’t look like they put in any effort, doesn’t mean they don’t. In my case, once I didn’t have time to waste on all the work I got, I triaged ruthlessly to cut out all the stuff I didn’t need to do. So, it looked like I was putting in little effort to get good grades, but I was gaming the system in a way, putting in effort where needed and not trying where not needed. Before that happened, I just put a lot of effort into everything. And gaming the grading system takes some effort too, but there’s a great payoff in the return you get.

Finally, it would have been entirely possible for me to maintain my grades while building my social skills. The problem was, it would have taken a lot longer to do so, and I would have missed a lot of chances to make new friends or develop friendships I already had. So I made the choice to sacrifice work a bit for the sake of friends, but I certainly didn’t have to. It was simply the way I wanted to go about meeting my goals.

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