I’m so emotional and upset right now that I really don’t have the energy or inclination to apologise for not posting in yonks. I was writing a novel. Also exams, which are part of but not really the reason I’m so upset right now. Today was the last day of the school year for my school, and every year we have a ridiculously long award presentation ceremony in the gymnasium after school finishes which recognises students who have performed well academically. There are awards for placing in subjects, and merits for effort in subjects, and then other special awards for different things.

I don’t see much point in beating around the bush here, because that’s what I do everywhere and it’s done nothing for me. I’m a straight A student. I do really well at school. I try so hard to hide this, to not let anyone know, because to let on that you get those kind of grades is, at least in my school, to have people label you as someone who brags. So I go out of my way to make sure no-one knows my grades, and then people bully and cajole them out of me to the point that I feel more rude refusing to tell them than by telling them. The result of finally divulging my marks is having people, for the most part, jokingly tease and get frustrated with me, blaming me for the reason they were below the average, or for making them feel bad, and just generally telling me to stop being so damn good at whatever subject it is that I’ve done well in.

I’m generalising, of course, because some people are genuinely nice to me about it, and very few people mean to be nasty when they tease me about my grades. It’s all in good fun, for the most part. But I feel like I can’t win, no matter how hard I try. Once people establish you as having good grades, you become the benchmark. People pry your results out of you so they can compare their marks. If you do well, then people sigh and push you and shun you in mock or real exasperation, say that you’re bragging even though they begged and grovelled to know what your marks were, and blame you for everything that’s going wrong with their marks. If you don’t do well, people rub it in your face, yell to the world, and get downright giddy with excitement over your apparent downfall.

You don’t get to show that you’re proud of your marks, because people think that you’re bragging. You don’t get to be disappointed when, compared to your past results, you don’t do very well, because apparently it’s too selfish to feel bad about marks that are higher than others’. If you act indifferent, people assume that you don’t care, and that you don’t deserve the marks because they wanted them more. If you hide your results to avoid having to react and be judged on your reaction, people come to you in packs and bully you into showing them how you did, and then proceed to judge you on your marks regardless. If you show people your results, clearly you’re showing off.

You’re not allowed to be stressed about classes and assessments, because apparently you find it easy, and because you’ve gotten high marks in the past, you automatically will now. People downgrade the hard work you actually put into receiving those marks. People come up to you and tell you to your face that you’re lucky, you don’t understand what it means to work hard, that you can just breeze through things. Perhaps that is true to an extent. Nonetheless, I’m yet to meet a so-called “smart person” who doesn’t work their arse off for their results. I certainly do. I study. I spend hours on assessments. I work so damn hard to get the results I do, and people tell me that I don’t, that it’s easy for me, and alienate me. They put me in a completely separate category than them, as though I’m superhuman and am not allowed to talk about being stressed or under pressure or worried about a result without being attacked for saying so.

People start to see you as your grades rather than your personality, and the people you don’t know so well in your class address you, if ever, with “Sam, you’re smart, can you [insert some task for you to do for them]“. And as annoying as it is, I help them, and I explain the things they ask for, because I think that maybe, if I talk to them and let them get to know me through that, they might realise that I’m a nice person. A person who has feelings. They don’t. They continue to see you as your grades, and if they ever talk to you, it’s always somehow related to that.

That brings me back to the awards ceremony. I have a reputation for getting multiple awards, because I’m “smart”. Not because I work hard, which I do, or because I did a good job in the assessments, but because I’m “smart”. Dear people of the world, there is no such thing as “smart”. I work hard, I pay attention. Sure, maybe I learn faster, or have a better memory, or some advantage like that which I can’t help but have, but it doesn’t mean I don’t work hard, and it doesn’t mean I’m just indifferent to my results and how people talk to me because of them. All day today, people were coming up to me and telling me that I’m an asshole, or a loser, because I was going to get lots of awards. Jokingly, for the most part, but constant. Too far, sometimes. People placed bets on how many awards I would get.

I didn’t get as many as I have in past years. I did well, but not exceptionally so, and I had to endure so many people telling me they were disappointed, that I sucked compared to last year, that I needed to work harder. Jokingly, mostly, and a joke is fine, but I had one person actually sincerely tell me without joking around at all that they were proud of me and that I did well. One. And while the others were joking around, and some of them even added later some congratulations, I had one person sincerely excited for something I was proud of.

I feel like people don’t understand that this is what I’m good at. This is my talent, this is what I can shine at, and this is what I’m proud of and work my arse off for. Anyone else’s talent, and there’d be praise all over the place. Being good at schoolwork doesn’t seem to count for much at all except constant jibes and humiliation and stereotyping.

I’m thankful for my grades, and I’m proud of them. I worked hard for them. But I really, really do hate everything that goes along with getting good marks. I want to be good at something that I can be proud of and excited about without other people reacting horribly, and I want people to see me and judge me by my personality and not as “that smart girl”. Right now, I’d like someone to share my happiness and excitement over the things I did well in, to let me be disappointed at the things that were, as far as my own past results are concerned, not my best, and just let me be.