This is going to seem kind of offbeat, but it’s been on my mind recently. I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest for a while now but I didn’t know if you would still accept me.
I was a slacker in high school. Well – that may be a little unfair. Perhaps “underachiever” would be a better word. I always took honors and AP classes, I was always respectful to my teachers and administrators, and I was very involved in extra-curricular activities. In terms of my academics, however, I was very comfortably “above average.”
Truth be told, I’m pretty sure that had I really applied myself, I could have been at or near the top of my class. But for some reason, I was content to turn in half of my homework, skip the whole “studying” thing, and exert the minimum amount of effort required to earn a “B” in class (C’s were verboten in my house growing up). This must have irritated my mother to no end (she’s a teacher!), but to her credit, aside from the “No C’s” thing, she pretty much stayed off my case about it.
I’m not proud of this at all. In fact, I’m actually a little embarrassed. As karmic payback, I ended up teaching at the school where I graduated and had to work with some of the teachers whose classes I coasted through. While I’m sure they barely even remembered my middling performance in their classes, I could never quite shake the feeling that some of them would look at me and think, “This guy was the biggest underachiever I ever had – and now he’s a teacher?”
I’ve been obsessing a bit about this lately as my son recently turned three. He’ll be starting preschool in August and I’ve been reflecting a lot on my slackerness trying to determine when it actually started, what (if anything) contributed to it, and how to keep my son from doing the same things.
I’m sure I’m being a little melodramatic here. I mean, I got into the colleges I wanted to attend, and even scored a Florida Undergraduate Scholarship, but something has always bugged me about why I was never motivated to “give it my all” in class.
I don’t blame my parents for not caring, my teachers for not having better lessons, my friends for being “bad influences,” or anyone else for that matter. But to this day, I wonder what it would have taken for me to stop being so lazy in high school.
If there’s a silver lining (or, at the very least, a point) to all of this it’s that I seem to have turned out OK. I’m a high school administrator with a wonderful family. If nothing else, all of my slackerness has given me a unique lens through which to view student apathy and school reform.
Photo: “Windsurfing Upriver” by bigdadventures.
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