Dear Stranger,
You see a little Asian girl in front of you. You find her quite interesting so you watch her a little more. She’s about 5 years old. Just starting to understand and remember. She just got put into an abundant of classes: ballet, swimming, piano, art. It’s so that she can explore what she likes. Despite having so many different activities to attend, she’s constantly surrounded by books. She likes reading, but it’s not those kinds of books. Practices workbooks. She gets them every summer and gets Brain Quest flashcards for her birthday. She doesn’t mind though because that’s how she grew up. This was normal for her.
She doesn’t mind having to stay in everyday during the summer working on practices tests and problems. She memorized her multiplications by preschool and took excelled English classes 30 minutes before school started in first grade. She was always the top of her class. A+ student. This was normal for her.
She doesn’t have many friends in elementary school. They’re all guys and although she played kickball and basketball with them every day during recess, there was only so much she could relate to with them. In first grade, her closest friend told her “we’re not friends anymore because I found another friend” and fifth, she felt invisible. But it didn’t really matter because all she did was do practice problems when she got home anyways. She grew to be a very shy child because of this. This was normal for her.
You watch her a little more and now she’s in middle school.
She started 6th grade nervous by the amount of people she saw everywhere. She was startled by the girl that approached her with so much enthusiasm and …well… brightness. As she continues with the school year, she realizes that she’s not the top student anymore. She gets B’s and even a C. But she finds friends that she is comfortable with. She feels happy with them, included. So she is okay.
She finds her passion in art and decides to apply for the exclusive Yearbook Committee for the next year. She puts her all in it and even works up the courage to ask her teacher for a letter of recommendation. She finds out that she got in and is beyond ecstatic and ready to work on the team next year. A week later, she finds out that she has to transfer schools. She feels devastated. She felt like she lost everything — her friends that she finally felt included in, the yearbook committee that she worked so hard for. She is not okay.
She feels excluded again in this new middle school. It’s not the students’ fault though. They already knew each other since 5th grade. She’s joining them 2 years later. Her ideas clash with her peers and she often feels left out. She develops a mean way to deal with how she feels and often hurts others while trying to be herself…whatever that meant. She feels lost and unsure. The rest of middle school becomes a dark blur.
Time passes quickly and you’re now watching her enter high school.
She is ready to start anew. She joins a club called Interact and volunteers every so often. She finds it fun as she gets to go outside and explore, compared to staying at home and doing practice problems. She looks up to the club leaders and thinks that they must be some superheros for being able to run something so large and successful on their own. She decides to apply to be an officer, just because. She tells herself “you probably won’t make it anyways. There’s nothing to lose” and turns in her application. On the day of the last meeting, the officers announces that she will be the next publicist. She’s surprised, proud, but more than anything, worried. She doesn’t think she is fit for the role.
She attends her first officer meeting almost half an hour late because her mom was not home to drive her there. She was upset about it, but nonetheless, learned a lot more about the club. She beings making flyers and although they don’t look that great, she has a lot of fun with it. She hears that there is a “Photoshop God” in the area and is afraid to approach him for advice. But soon, she gets a chance to work with him and learns a lot more than she ever would have in a day. She begins to find something that she really likes to do.
After a year, people began telling her that her flyers looked amazing and were the best they have ever seen. They say she is talented. She is baffled and believes people are lying. She never saw herself truly good at something. Piano, art, even math. It was all through pure repetition. She doesn’t see herself talented because all the things people say she’s good at, she only got good at them because she spent years working on it. But, graphic design was different. As time progressed and people started asking her for more designs, she realizes that this was something she was actually good at. Not only through endless practice (although there was a lot of that too), but maybe through some sort of hidden talent. She feels a bit less lost about herself now.
She leaves her usual group of friends as she realizes that the problem isn’t with them but with her. She just simply doesn’t feel happy with them. And that’s not their fault. She feels a bit more lonely, but she’s happy. She busies herself with Interact and school and grows to love leading members to volunteer events. Little by little, she grows out of her protective shell and becomes more open to people. “I guess leadership isn’t something so scary after all” she says.
She begins loving being in the leadership role and volunteers to become the president of a Chinese cultural exchange program she joined because she was so inspired by it. She wanted to inspire others through the program too. So she and her close preschool friends worked together to pull the program off. It was a lot of work. But they did it and she was so proud. At the end of the program, people thanked her and told her that they looked up to her. She was confused.
She never realized that she had became a person that people looked up too. All the time, she had been looking up to someone else. The president of the Interact club, the past president of the Chinese exchange program. But when people told her that they were afraid to approach her at first because she was seen as someone of power, she was confused. She did not realize until then, that she was also one of those people she saw as superheros, the people who were able to lead such a task without the help of adults.
So now, as she writes her college applications, she reflects on how she grew. At 5 years old, little did she know that she was going to become someone who loved to take on challenges and lead a team. Little did she know that she was going to love something she feared so much then. And even though she’s no longer the biggest fish in the pond, she’s proud of what she has done. While some people worked to be as good as others, she worked to be better than herself.
You realize that you’ve been watching the girl for a very long time. You watched her grow from the lost invisible girl, to the loud challenge loving leader. But then you remind yourself that that still isn’t the full story of her.