Until now, I hadn’t realized that I’m practically a college student. I’m in the 11th grade, but I’m taking more college classes than high school ones. I know I’m not the only one, in fact most of the students I know also fit into this category.

I know I signed up for it and all, but when it’s put like that, it makes the rat race we’re in crystal clear and now I can never go back to my old way of thinking. See, I used to think that if you weren’t overloading yourself AP classes, you weren’t as good of a student. I’m disgusted typing those words out, but I think we all have that same thinking just as a result of the kind of educational environment we were reared in.

Think back to sixth grade, the first reckoning, the first time lines were drawn in the sand between the haves and the have-nots. There were the Pre-AP kids and the OLs. The name itself, On-Level says all you need to know. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with being on-level, but if you’re in the class above that, wouldn’t that suggest that you’re above-level? That’s not what they called it, though. To save face, they dubbed it “Pre-AP.” 

But hold up, since when was doing what you’re supposed to at the proper time in the proper grade bad?

I think this way of thinking has been conditioned in us. Ever since we were in the second grade, the emphasis has been on success in school. Sure, it’s great to also be successful in life, but if you weren’t successful in school what kind of life were you even living? If you weren’t a good student, then what were you? Sure, they always preached that each and every student was a priority, that we all mattered, but did they make room for those of us that didn’t fit into their mold? 

What about the creative thinkers or kinesthetic learners or the artistic ones who found better value expressing themselves through a work of art as opposed to through an essay? Those students weren’t really accounted for; they didn’t fit into the mold. So by school’s faulty definition of a “good student,” they made us into bad ones. And like I said before: if they weren’t good students, what were they? As school has told them time and time again: dumb.

We are more than students, though. We could be artistic or poetic or fantastical. Just because we aren’t ‘good’ students or we aren’t taking 8 AP classes doesn’t mean we’re dumb. It may be that you just don’t fit into the mold.