on intelligence

living with the shame of intelligence in rural america

i remember when i was first made ashamed of being bright.

it was in the fourth grade, when i was nine years old. my family had moved from irrigon to hermiston that summer, so we kids were in a new school, and for the first time i was a "new" student. i had been happy in my former school. i had lots of friends, and i was one of the leaders in my class; on the playground during recess, we frequently played games that i invented. everyone knew me in irrigon, and from the first grade through the third, no one thought i was strange. it was only in the fourth grade, in a new school, that i was made aware how very different i was from everyone else.

my first mistake in this new school was to make friends with two boys, both of whom were outcasts. i saw them the first week in the bushes, looking for bugs, and being interested at that time in all things insect-like, i joined them. apparently, both an interest in insects and a tolerance for boys made me unfit for the society of the rest of the female fourth-graders-- i was shunned, and called a bug-eater. the only girl in the class who sought my company, colleen, was even more outcast than myself. in retrospect, i would guess she suffered from both adhd and asperger's, but at the time, she was simply another "weirdo." colleen's clumsy attempts at friendship with me cemented my social doom.

before this age, i had no understanding of concepts such as "popularity." i had always been one of the smartest kids in my class; in my old school, this meant i was respected by my peers. in this new school, being the first kid with my hand up when the teacher asked a question got me mocked by my peers. and then came the iowa tests.

you probably remember the iowa tests-- the standardized assessment tests of basic skills that most K-12 students took every year. i can still remember them; a whole day of tests, regular schedules ignored, repeated admonishments to bring TWO number two pencils, filling in all those little ovals. most of the other students complained about them, but i didn't mind them, which was of course, regarded as further evidence of my "weirdness."

around six weeks after we took the assessment tests, we received the results. they were given to us on sheets of blue paper; the body of the page held explanations of what each category represented, and the scores were printed on white sticky labels and affixed to the top of the page. the teacher called us up to her desk in alphabetical order to hand out the assessments. while she called out names, many of the students stood around, quietly comparing scores. i had just gone back to my desk and sat down to look at mine. one of the other girls, shannon, came over and asked, "how did you do?" so i handed her my page while she handed me hers. i hadn't looked at hers for more than a few moments before she suddenly snatched it out of my hands and dropped my page on my desk. she didn't say anything, she just looked at me...and i will never forget that look. she looked at me as if i was a freak. and she looked as if she hated me for it.

shannon went over to a group of girls and whispered to them, and they all looked at me and giggled. i could feel my face getting hot and flushed while they stared at me as if there was something wrong with me. my highest score on that assessment was a 99 out of 100. my lowest was a 92. i folded the sheet, and then folded it again, and again, and hid it in my pocket. after that day, i was called brainiac and know-it-all, as well as bug-eater. after that day, i never shared my assessment scores or report cards with another student, and i hid my test scores whenever i was able. it never occurred to me that my being smart could make other people feel diminished. i only recognized that my being smart made me a "weirdo" in the other kids eyes, and i was ashamed.

it's funny, though-- as ashamed as i was of my high test scores, it never occurred to me to make deliberate errors. it never occurred to me to not do my best, every time. it never occurred to me to pretend to be something other than what i was, because i was incapable of doing so. i am the perpetual popeye-- i yam what i yam what i yam what i yam. and that's all that i am. but it don't win me any popularity contests.