Growing into High Society

By Jonathan Lam on 12/24/17

Tagged: brain-dump

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I feel powerful sometimes in school. I’ve been a member of our local school system since the third grade, and I’ve consistently stayed near the top of my class ever since letter grades were first assigned in fifth grade. Staying true to my values, I’ve never committed a discipline-warranting action, do my best to keep up my academic integrity, and generally try to get on the good side of teachers. I feel like I’ve gained a mutual amity with many of the people that I am around— even those that I wouldn’t consider my friends— simply by the virtue of staying non-confrontational.

Then again, I may be totally misrepresenting the situation. I wrote the post, Mr. Braggartpants, a few years ago on THL, and I think the feeling is coming back to me. I’m simply too proud of myself for superficial accomplishments or for effort that I used to put in activities that I’ve more recently slacked off on. It quickly turns to complacency. And then boasting. I feel this inexplicable need to explain my own situation, or talk over someone else’s glorious moment, or just inject myself into the situation when I really don’t need to.

A simple case of this egotistic maltemper is poor manners. When people ask me, “How was your day?” I answer their question quite literally. I go on and on about my day, or I reply in a short “okay” or “fine,” but I never ask them about theirs. I’m not sure if I should return the question out of courtesy or because that’s what their goal in asking me about my day was first. I’m honestly not very interested in other people’s days and don’t believe in feigned politeness.

But a much more troubling case is in my academics in general. In the freshman and sophomore years, when I felt that I was doing worse in class and started to speak in a more annoying manner, I made a list of all of the mistakes I made. I shamed myself into getting better. I wrote a blog. I wrote the “Mr. Braggartpants” post on that blog. I saw the patterns that came out, and I acted on them. Slowly but surely, the academic mistakes faded from view, and I became more reserved in a thoughtful way. In short, I learned from my mistakes.

The problem is that I’m not doing it anymore. Others may call it “senioritis.” But I hope I cannot attribute my malaise to such a sorry and lazy excuse. I find that, ever more often, I reveal too much of myself to too many people— mostly about the coding, bowling, and programming that they’re not interested in— boasts about myself, that were once true but now faded into a memory. What’s worse than complacency is decline, and I think that I’ve spent enough time not improving my skills that the latter has begun. I can talk about cross country and how I was Varsity for all four years. But the reality is that I was only Varsity and improving in freshman and sophomore years, with a default spot in junior year because of the number of injuries on the team and in senior year because any members of the team who had been around for all four years gain an automatic Varsity letter. Same goes with bowling— my senior year has gone far worse than the other three. (I may have just discovered the cause, but that’s beyond the point.) I know I can do better— after all, I am the most senior member of both teams— but I’ve failed them. It’s so totally my fault, and everybody knows it.

This worst feeling is knowing that you’ve let not only yourself down, but also your team. It’s like a constant reality check. That way, neither your internal voice nor your classmates can act as comfort, because they’re both dismal.

I wish I could make this statement stand out in large, blinking, colorful text, in a way that wouldn’t take away from its meaning. But it’s the cost of complacency, and this depression has been dragging me backwards for the entirety of this school year, between cross country and bowling.

Luckily, I can say that my mathematics and programming skills have been generally on the rise, but I remain so excited that I can’t become complacent.

But the problem continues with the humanities. I spend too little time drafting essays for English and practicing presentations for Spanish, instead procrastinating by working on programming projects and practicing extremely difficult mathematics. I’m taking regular level classes in both of those subjects now, a step down from last year’s AP-level English and Honors-level Spanish, because I am afraid of the commitment of taking the AP-level courses this year (and because there are no Advanced or Honors level courses in between for a compromise). The problem is that my grades are roughly the same, and in the case of Spanish, it’s actually slowly decreasing. And I know the mistakes are totally my own fault.

Aside from complacency, another interesting aspect of this selfish feel is a sense of immunity to harm. One particular immunity I have felt is against all of my classmates. I’m that nerdy, Asian, skinny student, the type that always gets beat up in movies. And yet I believe that, simply by the virtue of my being nice to other people, they won’t beat me up. Even if I report them for using drugs in the bathroom. Sometimes I talk about creating a student patrol in the bathrooms as a form of official anti-drug collaborative effort, but nobody agrees because they’re afraid of being ganged up on by the drug users. Then I would talk about my willingness to become a martyr (not literally, hopefully) for the cause, if that would finally cause the raise of awareness necessary to begin official action against the problem. Looking back, however, it’s just grand talk. I think all I would become if I was targeted by drug users would be marked as stupid for sticking my nose into dangerous business. My egoism getting to me.

I even hate to write this essay about myself. It exactly embodies what I’m trying to get rid of, and is exactly the main reason why I was afraid to begin writing a blog in the first place. But I hope expression is the first step to treatment.

Sincerely, Mr. Braggartpants.