But often, I wonder how much further I would have gone had I come from different circumstances. In middle school, for about six months, I attended a school in San Antonio, and found a friend who, like me, was academically bright and focused on studying more than other things. We usually got around the same grades on things, and in many cases, I was praised for my work above hers, and we competed against each other for better grades. We were both in the Gifted & Talented program, and having someone like her to compare myself to made me work harder in order to achieve and be the top. We both attended a violin class after school once a week, and since I had played for much longer, I was naturally better than her, and I could see the jealousy on her face when the instructor asked me to play for the class instead of her. And I was proud of it. I liked being accomplished, and even when she did better than me at things, I lied the idea of working harder to beat her, even though she was a good friend. This doesn't sound like a healthy friendship but it was; this unspoken competition between us is what drove me to do better, and I'm sure it helped her in the same way. At this point in my life I think this sort of competition between peers is important, and it was what drove me for many many years to do my best.
However, later in my life, after I moved back to Houston and had gone through more years of school, I slowly lost this state of mind. I am very thankful for the high school I attended because I had amazing teachers and huge opportunities, but it was also one of the poorer schools in my district, and was looked down on by other schools as being "ghetto," and fewer people that surrounded me had the same mindset to work hard. The fact that I always did the best I could became something that was looked down on; people disliked me for it, they would make fun of me for it, or call me an "overachiever," like it was wrong or something. People around me laughed about procrastinating, and would brag about how quickly they could finish an assignment after putting it off until the last minute. This was a common way of thinking, even among those who were incredibly smart. There were many who worked hard, but also many whose natural smarts allowed them to get by without doing as much work or putting their all into what they did. I found myself slowly becoming this way as well; I didn't have to do much to get an A, so I didn't do much. Slowly school became tiring and boring, and I dreaded it. The only thing that kept me going was setting goals in gymnastics, but by my sophomore year of high school, I had quit gymnastics and this mindset was completely gone, and I wasn't sure what it was I was working so hard for anymore. And I stopped trying. My grades slipped, I was unmotivated, and I didn't perform as well.
By Senior year I made up for a lot of the damage, and now am in a wonderful college in Austin, at one of the nation's top business schools. But I still wonder what would have happened to my life if I had lived my life out like the girl from middle school. Her parents were wealthy enough to send her to a small private high school, and she is now at Harvard, studying law. Once, we were on the same level academically, which makes me wonder how it is possible for our lives to be so dramatically different today. Not to say that I am not thankful for where I am; like I said, UT is a wonderful school and I am even blessed to have gone to a high school with great teachers and smart students, but it is interesting to me how different our lives are from each other now after parting ways.
From an individual perspective, it is completely my fault, of course; I should have lived up to my potential, I should have kept trying, and working hard to be more intelligent and successful. I am in no way trying to blame my regrets on my situation. But I think this concept is more external to myself rather than being solely a problem with myself, it's an institutional phenomenon, a sociological one. I have been studying a lot of sociology this semester because of a class requirement, and currently we are going over class distinctions and what causes society's hierarchical differences, and I find these things extremely interesting.
For class I have to read a book called "Privilege" by Shamus Rahman Khan, although I haven't gotten far, I read that the term "meritocracy," what my country builds itself upon, was coined by a person who saw it as "the cold scientization of ability and the bureaucratization of talent." I never thought of this as a bad thing; of course I prefer this over aristocracy or other hierarchical systems but it's interesting to put into perspective a little. Khan says that it obscures "how outcomes are not simply a product of individual traits."
To me, this means that it makes it seem like in this country, everyone has the same opportunity to get far, when that is not the case in the slightest. It makes it out to be something that gives every innately smart person an equal opportunity to make use of this, something that gives every person an opportunity to make use of their talents, but this really isn't true. Actually, and Khan explains this, this "increase" in opportunity has actually increased the gap between the wealthy and the poor, which seems to contradict the purpose of doing it this way. He writes, "What seems natural is made, but access to that making is strictly limited." More and more as time passes, people who attend college are those who come from wealthy families, who make possible more opportunity for nurturing natural talent. The differences that result aren't because of innate differences but because of situation ones, to some extent.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."- Karl Marx
I think that is really true; I mean, in a lot of ways, we don't have control over some things that hinder us. I'm not in any way trying to say that we can blame our failures just on circumstance but I've always kind of thought it was unfair to think of everyone as having "equal opportunity" because I don't think this is the case. I don't think it's right to use that as an excuse though, which some people do as well. I'm realizing the importance of making the best of your situation, no matter what, so that you are comfortable accepting the things you cannot control because you know you've done everything you can to make the best for yourself.It's what you do with what you're given that is important.
[PS. This post may or may not be all over the place, and my point may not seem clear but I've never been good at getting words out so there you go. This wasn't supposed to be this long either. Oh well.]
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