"Smart"

My grandmother lives in an assisted-living community near my hometown. Inevitably, other grandparents of people I grew up with live there, and, inevitably, their grandchildren pay them holiday visits. Recently, when my grandmother told one of her friend’s now grown grandchildren who I was, my former classmate’s response was: “Oh, yeah, I remember her. She was...smart.”

"Smart" is the label I was tagged with; good at school is what I was forced to be; smart is how I will forever be remembered. And smart is what I tried to get away from when I went away to college, when I traveled the West Coast and then made my own home in New York City and began working in the bar industry. I didn’t want to be smart. Smart to me meant I was still that scared, nerdy junior high girl with glasses, braces, and perpetually untameable hair who was too shy to speak to nearly anyone and who never felt she had anything to offer to people, because "smart" wasn't even something she had chosen - it was merely an adjective attached to her head so her father could proudly show her off to his colleagues as his offspring. So in New York, I worked hard to craft what I thought was my own identity. I wanted to look and be and seem everything I hadn't been, everything Ithought I wanted to be and had never been able to be - pretty, outgoing, confident - anything that was antithetical to my associations with "smart."

I left my old hometown twelve years ago. I finally entered graduate school this past fall. When my letter of acceptance came in the mail last spring, I screamed out loud to the stranger opening her mailbox next to me and scrambled through my bag for my cell phone to start calling anyone I knew to tell them "I GOT IN!" - all the while thinking I can't believe they let me in...I'm not that smart. But thus far I've proven that I can more than hold my own in school. More importantly, I'm doing what I want to do, at the place I want to be, working my ass off to get the best grades I can for no one else but myself. Because I’ve come full circle. Because I know I can be many things and not just one. And oddly, I often come off as ditzy now, but it just doesn't matter to me. Because I know that I’m smart. Because I want to be.