I've struggled with school for a long time. I hated it from a very young age. I think I was about 5 when I started to pretend to have stomach aches or be sick so that I could go home early. I attended a Spanish immersion school until 2nd grade then moved to an all-English school. Not only was I new and had no friends but I also was behind everyone. I was just learning how to read and write in Spanish at my old school so the switch was even harder on my learning.

In second grade once I had just switched schools I was so behind that I had to sit at a separate desk and work with a TA. In my memory, I remember this table as being in a dark little corner of the room though that could just be the way my 7-year-old brain thought of it. I would sit there with the TA and struggle to write without being utterly embarrassed and afraid I would spell things wrong. I specifically remember sitting at a computer and having to type the word “as.” I knew that it was either spelled a-s OR a-s-s. I couldn't decide what was right and what was wrong so I sat there, my face getting hot and red, my eyes starting to well, and typed nothing for a solid couple of minutes. To be honest I'm not sure what happened after that but I do know that I felt embarrassed.

Fourth grade was the year I struggled the most in. Although I was trying I just couldn’t understand what we were learning in class. It was time for report cards and at this point, I knew I was doing bad but I thought it couldn’t be that bad. Once I got handed that yellow folder I had to peek inside. I pulled out that white slip of paper and my heart dropped. The first thing I saw was an F, I'm not sure what class it was in or any of my other grades but I knew that I wasn't going to hand this over to my father. My mind was made up the second I saw that F. 

I could only think about how I had been trying, I had tried so hard to be better. But at the same time, I thought that the F I got was a sign that I wasn't trying. And if I thought this surely my father would think the same thing. My solution to this problem was to hide my report card under my mattress. Though I got away with this for months until I was found out. Obviously, I was caught at one point, and of course, my parents weren't thinking the way I was. They were understanding and from there I kept pursuing a better relationship with school. 

 It wasn't until middle school that I actually started to improve in school. I was starting to get the help that I needed which led me to not hate school as much. 

My junior year of high school changed a lot for me. That was the year I started to really enjoy learning. My first-semester humanities teacher had let us choose the book we wanted to read and write about. This had been done before but this time was different because I had found an interesting book. A book that I loved reading and wanted to learn more about. I never read outside of school before finding books that actually interest me. The book was Osamu Dazia's “No Longer Human”. After reading this book everything about school became more interesting to me. I remember feeling a surge of excitement when I finished the book and started looking for my next book. Throughout my school life, I realized that the complex of feeling less than others when it came to academics never faded. I only saw this when I started to be good at school and compare work to the others around me. I hadn't realized this until recently. I remember working on a writing piece for my second-semester humanities class, we did peer critique, a normal thing for my school. The only thing going through my mind was how much better this person's work was than mine. Becoming passionate about school led me to realize that I was constantly comparing my work to others, and when I wasn't top of the charts in something I began to hate myself. 

I created this sort of inferiority complex within myself and it was horrible. I felt a tight gnawing anxiety in my chest while I thought I was below everyone. I had never fully realized the impact that my first school experience had on me. It wasn't until recently that I put that together and from there I have been trying to work on myself. This has been something that has been ingrained in my subconsciousness, working on it takes a lot, and I'm not fully there yet but I'm trying and slowly but surely getting somewhere and improving my self-image.