This post is inspired by OUMEKWE1’s post “Am I smarter than a fifth grader”. I had a comment to write but it was getting long so I decided to make it a blog post.

In OUMEKWE1’s post they talk about being smart in kindergarten and always getting As because it was “easy as hell”. I could somewhat relate to their post but when I reflect back on kindergarten it wasn’t necessarily easy as hell for everyone. The way I see it, kindergarten was all about knowing how to follow instructions and “behave”. When I was in kindergarten I would always get good grades and progress reports with a few caveats. I would always get an “R” for rarely in the listening comprehension category and one other category related to behavior. I was known in kindergarten for being a “smart kid who doesn’t listen”. I was known to be in my own world and doing my own thing instead of engaging with what the teacher was saying. I think part of it was that I was bored and I wasn’t used to school. At home you do whatever you want but at school it was all about following rules. Because I never really listened, I guess they assumed that I didn’t speak English very well?? I was placed in ESOL in kindergarten and was pretty much stuck in ESOL until I complained enough about it and I tested out of it. Seriously, it sounds kind of unbelievable but I was there for I don’t know what reason. I always had a high reading level and my mom tells me that when I was in kindergarten I was reading bigger words than most of the other students. English is my first and only language, I never spoke my native language. I believe I was placed there because I didn’t follow directions. When I was in ESOL I never felt like I was supposed to be there and it felt like a big waste of resources. There are a lot of reasons why a student may have a hard time paying attention, especially at such a young age, but the system always wants to label a child with something and tell them they’re doing something wrong. My parents are relieved that I turned out ok because they said my kindergarten teacher complained about me all the time and they were worried I would be bad in school. I think it’s pretty trash to start policing and labeling students at that age. There’s nothing wrong with having high energy, or being quiet and introspective, or being extremely curious and wandering sometimes. We all come in with these differences but get taught by school to conform. I find that in itself to be disabling.

In class recently we were talking about what a fair classroom would look like; how could we best accommodate students’ needs while still maintaining fairness to everyone in the course? The topic triggered an unpleasant memory in my mind of a situation where a professor of mine tried to maintain “fairness” for all students.

This situation happened in Fall 2020, during our first fully virtual school semester. That semester was my most difficult semester to date, and not necessarily because of my course load. That semester I had a very close family member pass away and I was physically and mentally unwell. I’ve never been able to pin down what exactly was going on with me but I had extremely low energy and would sleep most of the days. I later found out I had type 2 diabetes and very low vitamin D levels, which I believe to be contributing factors but honestly, I can’t say what it was for sure. The thing that sucks about being this type of unwell is that no one cares. It’s very hard to get accommodation from professors without feeling like you’re oversharing about yourself and just hoping they have sympathy for you. When you get “real symptoms” or end up in a hospital/urgent care, you can just send your doctors note to the professor and they let you take the time that you need. When you’re just… tired? You get told to manage your time better, go to bed earlier, etc. Poor mental health? You get a week or so to mourn then you better get your act together.

A few weeks ago I was on the phone with a friend who didn’t feel comfortable getting vaccinated. She complained that today we trust doctors too much and that “Big Pharma” just wants to keep us sick so we should look after our own health. I tried to argue that there was plenty of reason to trust in the vaccine and she responded:

“After your experience with your doctor, don’t you see where I’m coming from now?”

In Summer of 2020, I did my second engineering internship at a very well known defense company. I was grateful to be able to work considering many people I knew had their internships cancelled, but it was also a pretty chaotic time to have an internship (summer class, long commute, COVID-19, and the death of George Floyd). With all this going on, an internship just felt exhausting in so many ways. I had to be in the lab everyday by 6am while commuting from Silver Spring.

I tried to make the best of it but honestly, this internship was pretty miserable for me. I was working with mostly <conservative> white people and they didn’t give me enough work to do. My manager was friendly to me but she wasn’t really present much. I didn’t make a big deal of it since I had other people looking out for me there and I knew she was a brand new manager so I figured she just didn’t know what she was doing yet. I came to realize later though I was not being given the same grace by her.