I was a straight A student. I was in GATE since 5th grade. (These days, they have some watered-down pull-out enrichment program called GT here in Texas and you have to be "tested" for it. Not the same thing.) I was in honors and AP classes in high school.
I had my life mapped out by 9th grade. I knew what I wanted to major in and had decided what college I would attend. I would look through the course catalog and figure out if certain AP courses would count towards their GE requirements. I was going to be a wildlife biologist and go to Africa, marry an architect, and have 3 children. I would get married at 30 to give me time to get my masters and start my career, and then I'd have my first child at 35.
I remember a discussion I had with my friends about getting the right classes in high school. There was an uproar when the school decided not to offer honors for chemistry the year I was taking it because a college prep class would bring down our GPAs, since honors classes were weighted. We resented being required to take college prep classes like computers, career and family studies (sex/drug ed), and PE. In fact, many of my classmates chose after school sports solely to get the waiver for 2 semesters of PE and to beef up their college application. (You had to be on varsity to get the waiver. I admit I canceled one semester that way myself. But you couldn't get out of freshman PE.) Some of us took summer school to make room for heftier classes. I took my computer requirement that way, but mostly just to get such a boring class out of the way faster. My real desire for taking summer school would be to graduate early so I could get the heck out of there and start real life sooner, but my parents didn't like that idea so that didn't happen.
There were a handful of girls who were candystripers just to be able to put it on their resumes. Most of them were also in school sponsored clubs, particularly the key club (service volunteer), and as many clubs as they could manage. Again, it provided another bullet point on their transcript. For a while, I resented that my parents wouldn't allow me to do the same, and I thought it would damage my chances of getting into a "good college." Indeed, we honors students were taught to believe that community colleges were beneath us and that only prestigious universities were acceptable. We took the PSAT as sophomores and ACT/SAT as juniors so we could retake them to score higher when we took them again as seniors.
One might think we were amazing to be so self-motivated, to achieve and work hard. It is, after all, a dying virtue in today's society. But it had its price. A very unhealthy price. The problem with the track I was in was excessive competition and worth based on grades and accomplishments.
I remember one particular day during my sophomore year when report cards came out with our rankings listed. I was embarrassed that I was only ranked 11th in my class and I didn't want to reveal it when everyone compared theirs. I especially didn't want Laurie to know where I ranked -- she was the one who had turned everyone against me in 6th grade and who, now in 10th, was the Academic Mean Girl; she was tied for 1st place with Kavitha.
The homework load was extremely high. I would start as soon as I got home from school and work till midnight, sometimes later. I envied my friends who could get up at 5:30am and work on it before school, but I got up at that time to go to seminary instead. I thought it was precious time I was wasting. In fact, I would rush through my scripture reading every day so I could get on to what I thought was more important. And on Sunday, I'd watch the clock at church, thinking I was wasting 3 hours of valuable homework time.
Never mind that I was stressed to the max. I was obsessed and couldn't stop. I didn't have time for anything but homework. No TV (not that there was anything to watch anyway), no running (I had lost my motivation anyway), no social life (most of my friends were doing homework too), no fun. Weekends were for catching up on homework -- just ask any of my classmates; they did the same thing. But as hard as I worked, I felt like I couldn't catch up. I felt like a failure. The straight A student got her first C on a test. I was devastated, but not as devastated as when I got my first F on a test.
One day, the stress finally got to me. January 26, 1996 I had my first nervous break down. At school, when a few of my friends saw me crying, they said, "this is your first one?" Bri, who was in the grade ahead of me, said, "get used to it because it only gets worse." No, there had to be a way to manage this stress. Years later, I remember watching a movie where the character was an over-achiever in the business world and she would listen to self-help tapes in the car telling her how to do more by managing stress with breathing and other such techniques. At the time, I thought there really was some sort of formula that would allow me to cram everything in. The advice I got from several other students in my grade and those ahead of me were the same: have a good long cry. Then get back to work. It was what we all did.
Well it wasn't working. I tried it for a couple months. But the breakdowns became more frequent. And the more I cried, the more tired I became, which only made it harder to find the stamina to keep working. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had a work addiction; it was a disease I'd contracted from my academic environment. It was nice to know I wasn't alone, but this wasn't the group therapy I needed.
One morning in Seminary, we were studying in Samuel where his mother Hannah prayed that she might have a son; if her prayer was answered, she promised to raise him up to bring him to the Lord; he would be a Nazarite, a missionary for life. The teacher wrote on the board what the world says should come first in our lives versus what the Lord says should come first. The world says money, possessions, education, a full-time career. The Lord says we must establish a strong relationship with Him first, then comes our family, church service, and all the rest. I realized that my education and future career were supposed to come third, and they were currently number one. Could that be the source of my stress? Then we watched a video about a young woman trying to decide what to do with her life. She was a senior and her friends were getting accepted to college. She was an over-achiever with great potential in a career in botany. She wanted to have a family too, but she didn't see where it would fit in with a full-time job. Her mother, her patriarchal blessing, and the scriptures helped her decide what to do in the end. And the words of my patriarchal blessing came into my head: "...I bless you that you might have a sense of perspective, that you may always place first things first in your life and recognize that which is most important. Then as life's important decisions come before you, this perspective, along with your recognition of the burnings and the stupors that come to you after you present the decisions to the Lord, will help you to make the right choices." I needed to be like Hannah and put my priorities in order. This was the time I was going to develop that sense of perspective. That was my epiphany.
I cannot say that I immediately broke the bad homework habit. I cannot say that I stopped trying to be the best. But Rome wasn't built in a day. That lesson in seminary was the turning point, and I built that city day by day. You always hear people saying how seminary always started their day out on the right foot. Well, I can't say that exactly, especially considering the carpool drama during part of my sophomore year. But I can say that it was worth getting up at 5:30am every morning, even if it was just for that one single lesson. I doubt it made any difference to anyone else, but it was exactly what I needed to hear at the time.
My sophomore year was a pivotal point in my life. I had many more enlightening moments that year that helped redirect me to the path of proper perspective. That perspective encompassed more than putting the Lord first in my life. Life wasn't about getting to the top. It was about happiness. "Men are that they might have joy." 2 Nephi 2:25 Was I happy as the over-achiever? No. So as the months and years went by, I worked on my perspective. One of the other things I learned to do was to have fun. I once heard the question "do you work to live, or do you live to work?"
My mom had tried to help me with this before. She didn't like that I was squandering my youth by doing homework. Sometimes, she would interrupt me and invite me to go do things with her and my step dad. My mom and I didn't have the best relationship so it was awkward, but after a little change in perspective, I started to accept the invitations. I remember one Saturday, she made me stop doing homework and took me with her to tour model homes. Another Saturday, she dragged me to the beach with her. Today, I thank her for it, and I have refused to let my own son do homework sometimes. (Yes, he'll get a bad grade on that particular assignment, but it doesn't affect his overall grade. And I have tried to keep the teacher from punishing him by keeping him in at recess to finish; I now firmly believe there are more important things than homework and test scores.) She showed me that she cared more about me than about my achievements.
That's also what helped me understand what it meant to be a child of God. I used to think, "how does my divine heritage make me of so much worth if everyone else is also a child of God?" My self-centered quantified sense of value was based on a rating scale. We evaluate students by scores and we judge each other by their talents and accomplishments. The way I saw it, I could only be of value if someone else was worth less than me. As skewed as that may sound, I realize more and more as I grow older that it is the same yardstick with which everyone around me also measures themselves. The thing about our divine nature is that we are all of infinite worth. Infinite -- it goes on forever; unmeasurable and incomparable. I was valuable not by what I could do but by what I was, and not in comparison to anyone else.
The following year, when turning in our assignments in English class, Mrs. Schaffer would have us recite "I am not my essay." In other words, we shouldn't take our grade personally because it was not a reflection of ourselves. I often wondered if anyone else understood the deeper meaning that became my lifelong mantra. I had figured out that who I was could not be determined by what I did, and therefore, I had nothing to prove. If I had nothing to prove, there was no point to rank, no point to competition, no point for comparison. Without competition or comparison, I was free to choose paths none of my peers were taking. It was a liberating realization how inconsequential being the top was.
It was also the gateway to being true to myself. "To thine own self be true," Shakespeare wrote. I needed to stop trying to be someone else, stop trying to do everything and be everything. I wasn't "Vogler." I wasn't Molly Mormon. I wasn't anybody that anyone thought I was. I was Julie-to-be-determined.
Against my teachers' and academic counselor's advice, I chose not to continue with math after my sophomore year. At the time, California required only 3 years of math. I'd taken algebra during the summer before high school to bridge the gap between junior high pre-algebra and high school algebra, just like everyone else in the honors track -- which counted as 1 year. So after geometry and algebra 2, I did not follow the rest into pre-calc and calculus. I decided not to take AP government and AP biology my senior year. While many of my peers thought I was unwise to do that, I know they secretly envied me.
Near the end of my junior year, one girl brought in an article called "Is This What Life's About?" in Newsweek, May 7, 1997. The author's experience as a student overworking herself for the highest GPA and the most extra curricular activities was exactly symmetrical to the lives of nearly every student in my pre-AP English class. At the end of the article, the author decided to take a day off -- she went to the park with some friends after school and then spent the evening talking with her family, and went to bed that night at a decent hour without doing any homework that day. Her last sentences were "I realize I did nothing "productive" -- nothing that would help my GPA or fill in a blank on some application. But I know that I lived, and I know that is more important."
Unfortunately, while everyone who read that article in my class seemed to commiserate with the author, I think most of them missed her point. But it was not lost on me, and I was grateful I had started to learn about living the year before. My rank slipped to 20th by the time I graduated, but I didn't care. It wasn't a race I cared to run. As far as I was concerned, my race was solo and I was on a runners high because I was running for myself.
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