I’m 5 years old in kindergarten, and all my friends are playing with their toys…
Usually I would do the same but I get bored and just pull out a piece of paper.
And I start to write a few numbers…
1… 2… 3…
100… 101… 102…
300… 301… 302…
507… 508… 509…
Woah, I have no more space left on the page… guess I’ll stop.
Then my teacher comes up to me…
Alex! What have you done!
I look at her, and I start to cry.
Why is she yelling at me?
My mother, who also works there comes up to the teacher and asks her what happened…
Oh I’m sorry, it’s just that in my 21 years of teaching…
I’ve never seen anyone do something like what your son has done!
My mother laughs it off and I still don’t understand…
what was so impressive about what I’d done…
But from that moment on, my mother would keep telling me I’m special and smart.
…
For most of my childhood, I thought school was slowly revealing who I was.
A good grade meant I was smart.
Struggling to study meant I was lazy.
Sitting alone meant I was shy.
Hating an essay meant I hated writing.
I never really questioned those conclusions.
They just became things I knew about myself.
But as I got older, life started giving me completely different evidence.
I could barely study for ten minutes…
but I could practice piano for seven hours.
I thought I hated writing…
until writing became one of the most important skills in my business.
I thought I was naturally quiet…
until I traveled somewhere nobody knew me and couldn’t stop talking to people.
And eventually I started wondering:
How much of who I thought I was came from me…
and how much came from what happened to me at school?
I confused performance with intelligence
I’m sitting in school as a teenager, I can barely study for 10 minutes at home and at school I almost fall asleep trying to listen to the teachers…
Why can’t I pay attention?
All the other students seem so focused…
And I hear they study for hours at home…
…
I’m in a test and it’s about halfway done…
I hear a chair being pulled back… the scratch against the stone floor…
and I look up, of course it’s the smart kid…
How are they so quick! I’ve barely gone through this…
Damn, why can’t I be quick and smart like them…
…
Maybe I just can’t be great at anything, I’m simply too lazy and stupid.
…
But school never sat me down and told me who I was.
It gave me grades, assignments, classmates, deadlines and expectations.
I was the one who kept turning all of them into evidence about myself.
My teacher is talking about something in front of class…
but I have no idea what the teacher is talking about…
I’m fully listening but I couldn’t tell you what he talked about 10 seconds ago…
…
Any questions, anyone?
Should I raise my hand?
I look around… nobody else is raising theirs…
Damn, am I the only one who doesn’t get it?
Am I just the stupid one?
But I really want to improve my grades and become better at school…
But if I raise my hands then everyone else will think I’m the only stupid one…
So I don’t raise them…
…
Another student raises their hand…
I look over at him, and then I hear the words leaving his mouth…
Oh thank god, that’s exactly what I wanted to understand too!
The teacher explains it, I understand it now…
but the strange thing is I don’t think the student who raised their hand is stupid…
the strange part is that the smartest kids were the ones who would raise their hands most often.
Maybe I didn’t think I was stupid because I didn’t raise my hand.
I wasn’t scared that asking the question would make me stupid.
I was scared it would show everyone else that I was stupid.
So I stayed quiet.
And staying quiet kept me ignorant longer.
I thought asking questions would expose my ignorance. But staying quiet was what kept me ignorant longer.
Then I started confusing the scoreboard with the game
COVID has arrived and we are told to stay at home…
from now on most of our school days will be performed from home…
But then when it comes time for physical education, instead of me thinking I was saved, our teacher still had assignments for us. Most of the times it was simple research about human health and muscle functions.
But this time our teacher wanted us to go for a walk, and send him a screenshot of the steps we took.
Alright, it’s nice weather outside, sunny and not too cold… the winter is over so perhaps I should enjoy the spring and summer and actually work out.
I walk to the hallway…
Ah, wait…
If I only have to send a screenshot of my steps… then that means I could just alter the number on the screen…
…
I’ve been playing games for the past hour.
Oh shit, I have to Photoshop my steps so I can send it in to my teacher…
I use an app where there aren’t many analytics to debunk my fake evidence…
and there we go.
Nice, now I can spend physical education just playing video games.
I mean, I technically completed the assignment?
…
A few days later, the teacher accepts it…
Good job, Alex. You’re a good kid and student!
oh my god, I actually got away with it!
I’m sitting in a history test…
but god dammit, I forgot to study for this test. So instead I quickly got the cheat sheet…
and I place it right under my ass, all I have to do is look down and act as if I’m thinking or writing and I can read it.
Perfect!
…
Okay, I’m more than halfway done with this test, I got this…
Classroom dead silent
I try to look down at the answers…
but damn my ass is so big I’m covering some parts of the text…
okay let me just adjust myself a little bit…
CRINKLE
Everybody looks my way…
Oh my fucking god, you have to be kidding me…
WHY DID THE PAPER MAKE SUCH A LOUD SOUND…
I keep a straight face…
the teacher walks over to me,
Alex, what do you have under there?
I feel the urge to lie… but honestly I’m too lazy to make an excuse, this was my fault completely.
I hand in the paper… and all my classmates laugh at me.
…
The test is done, everybody is leaving. And as I’m almost rushing out with my steps…
Alex, I need you to stay behind.
Classmates giggle
…
It’s dead silent between me and my teacher…
Alex, I know you cheated on the test and I will fail you… but I’m giving you a chance to redo it. Okay?
Yes Maria, thank you so much and I’m so sorry.
But my father works as a teacher in the same school as her, my life is over if she tells him that his son had cheated on a test…
But in the end… she never told him…
I completed the test a few weeks later…
and this time I didn’t even think to cheat…
I actually studied for a long time… and did well.
…
Grades instead of learning.
Steps instead of health.
Completing instead of understanding.
I got very good at figuring out how to win the scoreboard.
I just didn’t always notice when I had stopped playing the game.
I thought I hated writing
I’m supposed to write a long essay for my English assignment…
I have a deadline of a few weeks, but oh my god how boring it is.
Oh well, wait…
if I only have to write a certain amount of pages, that means I can just stretch ideas out.
Okay, let me get started…
Furthermore, I think that I this topic is obviously extraordinary. Because the premise of it is
I write as many advanced words as possible to extend the character length, and try to drag out the sentences so the page fills quicker…
then I can play video games after…
I don’t want to do school assignments at home when I can play all day.
…
I get a B on the assignment and get an A in English…
I barely tried, and I still did well…
Thank god, because English is a lot of writing…
and writing is so incredibly boring, I hate it.
…
Years later, I’m building my gaming channel to retire my mother who was working endlessly at her 9-5 job.
And as I’m studying thumbnails and video ideas…
I read about a lot of related subjects…
I have a whole notepad filled with ideas, I can’t stop writing…
If I don’t catch up with my competitors, they’re going to outperform me.
So I write as much as possible…
Titles are writing.
Hooks are writing.
Copy writing is writing.
Ideation is partly writing.
Then when I publish a video, I get data about how the video did and the idea…
Ah the video did quite well, okay this idea is working quite well. Let me write down why it worked and try to really understand it.
I have to write clearer titles, ideate and write a good thumbnail template, so that my viewers also understand everything way better.
…
Wow, I’m enjoying this, writing and reading about different subjects for this goal.
…
School taught me to write until I reached the required length. Business taught me to write until someone understood.
School also told me where I belonged
School didn’t only give me academic scoreboards.
It gave me social ones too.
Who had friends.
Who sat alone.
Who talked.
Who was quiet.
Who belonged.
…
I’m about to enter the school cafeteria…
Oh god, I have to find a table to sit at…
I grab my food and immediately look around…
Ah there, an empty table
…
I sit there not looking up, eating alone.
Other kids are probably looking at me like I’m a loser, sitting all alone here.
But…
I used to have my best friend group that I used to sit with and eat. It was so easy to eat at the school cafeteria…
Why am I so alone?
I lost almost all my friends here…
I feel lonely.
…
Eventually, after sitting alone during recces and school lunches so many times…
I decide to just talk to a bunch of boys in my class…
they seemed genuinely good, but I just didn’t want to feel alone.
So now, I’m eating together with them always.
Except now I’m always with my friends during free time.
It was normal to hang with friends during the break…
But I never wanted to feel or be alone, or to even be seen alone at school.
…
I solved the visible problem.
I wasn’t eating alone anymore.
But I was still the quietest person in the group.
So instead of questioning why I felt uncomfortable around people, I gave myself an explanation:
I’m just shy.
And once I had the label, I stopped needing to investigate it.
Then life gave me different tests
My mother hears a faint tune coming from downstairs…
she comes down with her bathrobe and I see her with tired eyes walking up to me…
Alex, wow. You’re still practicing on the piano! But it’s midnight, you should rest…
I glance over at the clock, it really is midnight.
You’re so smart Alex! I always knew you were special…
…
I had studied on the piano ever since coming home from school. Because I decided to get a better grade in music, just for fun.
So after almost learning a whole piece and studying for 7 hours…
I ended up playing it for my teacher…
Wow Alex, you’re so talented and smart!
…
I go to the mailbox to get my report card for the term…
I open it quickly and read through the grades…
Oh, art… D. I hate art.
…
Music: A
Wait, I got an A in music!
I really loved to study that piece…
Wait, how come I can’t study for 10 minutes. But I just studied for 7 hours and genuinely enjoyed it…
nobody had to tell me to study for that long, I just did it myself.
…
At first, the lesson I took from this was simple:
Maybe I actually am smart.
But years later, I think even that was incomplete.
I was still trying to answer the same question.
What am I?
Smart or stupid.
Disciplined or lazy.
Shy or social.
Life kept showing me that I was more conditional than any of those labels allowed.
Wait.
I can’t study for ten minutes…
but I just practiced piano for seven hours?
Maybe the question wasn’t simply whether I was disciplined.
Maybe it mattered what I was trying to become disciplined for.
And once I started looking, the same contradiction was everywhere.
I thought I hated writing.
Then writing became one of the most important parts of my business.
I thought I hated reading.
Then I found questions I desperately wanted answered and started reading voluntarily.
I thought I was simply shy.
Then I went to South Africa, talked to strangers constantly, and loved it.
Life kept giving me evidence that school never had the opportunity to give me.
Looking back, I don’t blame school.
School had to measure something.
Tests measured my answers.
Essays measured my assignments.
Grades measured my performance.
Attendance measured whether I showed up.
Those measurements weren’t necessarily wrong.
I was asking them questions they were never designed to answer.
A bad grade became:
“Am I smart?”
Struggling to study became:
“Am I disciplined?”
Sitting alone became:
“Am I someone people want around?”
Hating an essay became:
“Do I hate writing?”
Eventually those answers stopped sounding like things that happened to me…
and started sounding like me.
Then life kept contradicting them.
And I began to realize that maybe growing up wasn’t about finally discovering the perfect description of myself.
Maybe it was learning to question all the descriptions I had mistaken for permanent.
School didn’t decide who I was.
I let what happened at school decide what I thought I was.