Throughout my childhood, I always had a sneaking suspicion that I might be an actual genius. No one corroborated me in my theory, but that was because I was misunderstood just like all true geniuses.
My main clue was that I was already exceptional at eavesdropping having spent the better part of my preschool years hiding in pantries and underneath tables to listen to my parents' and older brother's conversations.
This was actually the only clue I had to work with, but boy, did I run with it.
While coloring the alphabet in my kindergarten class, I overheard my teacher explain to our classroom aide that I, Shasta Lewis, was going to go places soon. I kept my cool and continued coloring, but this fanned the flame of a seriously deluded fantasy.
I also didn't realize she meant that I was only going to the first grade since my eavesdropping skills were not sophisticated enough to distinguish context, but again, this was enough confirmation for me to believe that all of my wily schemes as a precocious kid were MENSA-material.
To be fair, I had plenty of moments that disproved my alleged genius to include that time I thought I would be safe hanging out of a second story window with a bedsheet anchoring me to the floor, but Thomas Edison's and Albert Einstein's respective plans didn't always pan out either. The fact that I did this and fell out of said window three consecutive times just indicated my tenacity to find the correct linen-anchoring-mechanism.
A hallmark of a determind genius!
For years, I entertained this fantasy of a wealthy patron of some notable organization or CEO of a Fortune-500 company noticing my genius as we passed each other quietly in the local grocery store. Though a young child of nine years old, my genius brain waves would radiate from my mind like a tangible forcefield as I held my mother's hand in the canned vegetable aisle.
In my overactive imagination, this anonymous person of considerable wealth would then turn to my mother and exclaim in a non-pedophilic way, "Ma'am, your daughter is clearly a genius! We have to unlock her potential!"
In a furious montage with flashes of me receiving diploma after diploma, donning a white lab coat, and shaking hands with the President as I received my Nobel Prize, I would fantasize about my future as a world-renowned genius. And then at a mere 12 years old, I'd finish my medical degree and reveal my groundbreaking research to cure AIDS, hunger, and cystic acne scars in one fell swoop.
I may not have been a genius, but you have to applaud my ego.
By 7th grade, my genius theory and subsequent fantasy were brutally shattered by the onslaught of hyperdriven, Ivy League bound middleschoolers who were usually of Asian descent. I had no idea who these kids were, but it was evident from the first day of class that I was not the one who was going to cure AIDS like I had originally planned.
These kids had not fallen out of second story windows at any point in their lives because they were too busy with their violin/cello/piano/tuba lessons and SAT/ACT/USA/911/LOL prep classes.
I had tried my best to keep up with them. I signed up for pre-pre-pre-SAT classes every summer. I begged my parents to let me have a grand piano for my birthday in the hopes that I had some untapped musical prowess (For the record, I never got that piano, and I am about as musical as a lint roller.) I made flashcards for all my classes and studied every night like a madwoman memorizing the countries aligned with NATO and the electron configurations of all known chemical elements.
Instead of being at the top of my class in every subject and earning my self-titled genius moniker, I became a bonafide basketcase.
I was bright, and I had the grades to show for it, but I did not matriculate with the highest GPA nor did I win first place in anything. Even after taking the SAT three times, I never achieved that perfect 1600. (4800? 9600? What's the highest score these days? I don't even know.)
In our yearbook, I wasn't a contender for "Most Likely to Succeed" but was voted "All Around Package Deal" not unlike the vacation specials you'd find listed on a discount travel website. As I entered my final years of high school, my youthful reverie of hobnobbing with the likes of Bill Gates, Oprah, and Nelson Mandela became deeply buried and embarrassing memories.
While I studied English at college, I transformed into a rather silent, non-participatory kind of student. I tried to sit close to the front of the classroom because I was already very small so it would have been easy for the professor to look right over me. Students in the back tended to get called upon more frequently because it's assumed they aren't paying attention, so I was operating under a modicum of reverse psychology.
I don't know what came over me, but I felt like an imposter in college because I wasn't there to make a difference! To find myself and the meaning of life! To change the department of English and use semicolons with purpose! I liked the idea of empowering leaders for a just and humane world, but I was much more inclined to follow along rather passively.
Whenever my peers paraded around campus in their Birkenstocks and North Face fleeces trying to inspire support for city water conservation research or whatever flavor of the month it was, I'd skirt around them to avoid this overly passionate condition of the mind that only seems to infect young, affluent college students. I found that my true peers were students who were committed to contractual, obligatory scholarships like me or students who were up to their eyeballs in federal loans. We just didn't have time to care about everything because we were more concerned about graduating on time and not accruing A) more obligations and/or B) more debt.
It honestly felt like I was on the outside looking into my classrooms, not unlike the vagrant squirrels that tap tap tapped on our windows. I was an active student on campus with enough extracurriculars to impress internships I never applied for, but I was equal parts inactive when it came to my daily classes.
Very rarely would I raise my hand to ask a question or offer an answer. If there had been a way for me to blend into the walls, I would have done it. I think there were one or two classes wherein I did not utter a single word aloud the entire quarter. I did my best to communicate through a furtive combination of imperceptible nods and blank stares.
I did not participate in class, and if I ended up with one of those professors who counted how many times you were active in a discussion and then included that as 10% of your final grade, I settled for getting a perfect score in the remaining 90% of the course.
An A minus was good enough for that kind of crap.
I always volunteered to be the lone shark when the number of students for group projects ended up with an odd man out in the classroom. I retained information from observing and listening quietly class after class to produce well-reasoned and thoughtful enough research to earn the grades that kept my scholarship intact and my name on the dean's list.
I managed to graduate with honors by sheer osmosis.
Now that I'm preparing for graduate school, I am trying to decide what kind of student I want to be this time around. As a former wannabe-genius, I can say that there is something intoxicating about setting your expectations dazzingly high only to have them crushed like a fruit fly.
At the very least, it makes for highly theatrical blog fodder.
I might not be in the same intellectual league with folks who are able to solve a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle (and if this is not part of the MENSA entrance exam, it should be) but I have become an expert in naming stuffed animals and applying online discount codes during flash sales. My English degree may sit beneath a mountain of dust and boxes of unopened office supplies, but it is proof that I am actually decent at this one thing, genius or not.
(Definitely not.)
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