Oh High School

Describe something you learned in high school.

The one thing I learned a few times in high school was that I could do more than I thought I could.

In eleventh grade I was misdiagnosed with hepatitis. I spent most of the school year in isolation before they put me and my mystery illness into the hospital to run more tests. Turned out, I had rheumatic fever. One round of penicillin worked a medical miracle. My liver was fine, but my heart valve was damaged, it was actually how they figured it out.

Needless to say, I missed a LOT of school. No one thought to send work home, so I was behind. Quite behind.

The next year I decided I wanted to go away to college. It was a late decision for a handful of reasons, but I somehow latched onto the plan and what followed surprised everyone. My parents never fully recovered from my early school years. Every year they had to have the no-you-do-not-have-our-permission-to-hold-her-back conversation, no she will not be in the same class as her younger brother. Send her on, who cares if she can’t read…no thank you to that stigma and/or embarrassment. So I existed as the not smart one, who later became the still not smart one who gets weirdly good grades. College was never discussed.

Then one day I learned I had this iron clad determination. I was going. My mind was made up. I jumped through every hoop, worked around the clock, tested and retested, signed up and shocked everyone by getting a decent score on my ACT. I applied, I even won scholarship money. I got in, got a student visa and went out of country to college. No one in my family ever did that before. It was a little crazy.

Who was that girl? At seventeen I made up my mind and defied a lot of odds. Later, through the years, I was always glad to remember that I did that. I had some other moments when I pulled off the seemingly impossible. Even today, it’s good to remember what a ‘stubborn will’ I have, and what can be made to happen because of it.