The Smart Kids Don’t Know

I.

She passed by me to get to her seat on the bus. I looked up, and we caught each other’s eyes. She smiled at me. I knew her name, but we’ve never really had a conversation. I’ve just seen her around. The exchange lasted 5 seconds, but suddenly I found myself looking back as she sat down rows away with all the other AVID students. 

It was mid-February and we were in the middle of a week-long Junior trip, where students from the AVID and Scholars program got to tour different universities around California. Due to our enrollment in these academic programs, we were rewarded with a special trip while “the cool kids”, or those who didn’t belong in either program, were expected to show up for class. 

Supposedly, being in AVID or Scholars meant that we deserved this trip because we were the smart ones, the ones who were going to make it in life. How the school defined who exactly was “smart” or what “making it” looked like was debatable, but irrefutable. Though I felt uneasy about this prospect, I didn’t do anything about it; I was too busy packing my travel-sized toiletries and planning outfits that would look good for Instagram pictures. 

For most of us—a group of Black, Latinx, and Asian kids from a small town—we were just excited to see what our future could look like.

During a lunch break at Berkeley, I saw her sitting down with a girl I knew. The NorCal weather was in full force as college students walked by, wearing hoodies and socks-with-Birkenstocks, paying no mind to us. I made my way over, confident that the company of a mutual friend wouldn’t make my presence awkward or suspicious. The friend I knew exclaimed a hello, while she shyly smiled and made space for me to sit down. We made small talk while propping up a hand on our foreheads, protecting ourselves from the sun. 

~

From 2015-2016, I found myself at the intersection of two transformative experiences: graduating high school and falling in love. The former was a predetermined expectation, a finish line that I couldn’t wait to reach, while the latter took me by surprise and shook my world upside down. Yet, as both forces converged on each other, the culminating effect became a long-awaited gift that demanded me to look deeper and elsewhere.

II.

At the end of 8th grade, I got accepted into the high school Scholars program. 

Being a Scholar meant that because of your “stellar academic history”, you were part of an elite group of the smartest students in the Freshman class. And that, as a 14-year-old, you were ready to take on the most rigorous courses the high school had to offer. Freshman Scholars were the only freshmen allowed to take an AP class, and the only students who attended summer school in order to get ahead. 

All of this was supposed to help us get accepted into the most elite universities in the country, and inevitably, increase the reputation of our high school.

She was one of the top students in the AVID program. AVID stood for Advancement Via Individual Determination, and was created to help prepare students—who were typically from low-income or minority communities—for college eligibility and future success. Unlike the Scholars program, AVID accepted students who were in the “academic middle”. This was anyone who was willing to work hard and learn skills to be successful. While these skills were not particularly useful beyond the classroom (or even college for that matter), AVID believed in giving anyone a chance, as long as they worked for it. 

By the time of the Junior trip, I was one of the top Scholar students in my class. This was measured both by my class ranking, and knowing that other Scholars were out to get me. It wasn’t that we all hated one another —some of us really got along— but there was an energy of competition embedded within any classroom we occupied. If there was a grade to be given, then there was a race to be won. And we were all willing to lose sleep (and our sanity) for a whiff of that victory. This behavior went unexamined because it was just the way we were, the way things were. Teachers knew and encouraged it because we were the Scholars, after all.

We were the best of the best.

III.

After my countless attempts to talk to her during passing period, she was surprised that I wasn’t like the other Scholars, that I actually had a genuine interest in the lives of AVID students. She said this as a joke, but I knew what she was implying. 

The Scholars’ bourgeoisie reputation preceded itself, therefore we were defined by that reputation. But I wouldn’t say we didn’t try to uphold it either. At the time, I did think I was better than those in AVID, at least academically. Wielding a quantifiable level of intellectual power made what teachers had told me since I was 8 years old true, that I was “gifted and talented”, that I was special. 

Moving through the American education system as a Filipino immigrant kid, I soon caught up to the fact that when I did my homework, behaved in class, and got good grades, I would be rewarded. Like a hamster receiving food through a chamber, I became conditioned by this positive reinforcement and kept doing it over and over again that, by the time I reached high school, I was an expert at the game. While doing it triggered an anxiety disorder (which would go undiagnosed until college), I kept playing the game because I believed that it gave me value, a place to belong.  

The kids who did not participate in the game—for reasons that included not having the same privileged conditions I had—were shamed, outcast, and left behind. Witnessing this as early as the 3rd grade, led me to form a deep desire for acceptance and validation. A longing so immense that I freely participated and benefited from academic programs that structured themselves around exceptionalism.

But, at the time, I knew that I’d rather be part of something than nothing at all.

IV.

I knew I was falling in love, but didn’t quite understand what that meant for my sexuality, or our friendship for that matter. I just knew that I wanted to be around her, hoping that the friendship would naturally evolve into something more. However delusional that may have been, the hope for a romantic relationship felt more gratifying than anything else in my life. 

Out of our whole Senior class, she ranked #7, and I ranked #4. 

While this GPA measurement, in its fallibility, didn’t mean anything, I still saw it as a subtle power I had over her. A power that made itself known when she needed me to proofread her essay, or when she’d ask for help with the math homework. Coupled with the AVID and Scholar divide between us, and her life-long conditioning of pleasing people, the power thrived in full force. As I led her through my world, she followed along and believed in my adolescent brilliance. She’d tell me I was the smartest person she’d ever met, and I loved it.

The power she held over me felt different in nature.

She was a top student, President of the biggest club on campus, and a Varsity Cheerleader. Teachers loved her, boys had crushes on her. She had an ability to move through various spaces and be exactly what people wanted her to be, without breaking face. It looked effortless, or even more impressive, not an act. Unlike me, she was naturally gifted and talented, possessing a social capital, an outwardly-perfect persona that I could never attain. 

So when she, with her beauty and power, gave me time, attention and love, I felt that I was finally worthy of what I had been chasing after all my life. 

V.

By March of 2016, we started to hear back from colleges. When I saw the enjoyment on classmates’ faces after they got their acceptances, it seemed like all the hard work was finally paying off. 

Throughout our four years in high school, teachers and counselors sold us the idea that certain colleges had weight and prestige over others. So, by that understanding, we believed that those who got into those colleges had weight and prestige over others. Going to community college, or not going to college at all, wasn’t an option.

At the time, I relied all my future success and happiness towards the opinion of historically-white institutions. On paper, I had a good chance of getting into the colleges I wanted. I’d gotten straight A’s, passed 9 out of 10 AP exams, did more than 200 hours of community service, and had officer positions in 3 clubs at school. I was that well-rounded student that every teacher said we had to be.

But my dream was to get into film school, a career path that hardly any educator at my school knew about. So, one by one, I got rejected from my dream schools (probably due to an insubstantial portfolio), and was left with 3 schools that I thought I was too good for. They weren’t colleges people raised their eyebrows at, looking impressed. In my own clouded perspective, they were average, and after years of thinking I was special, I was just average. 

~

She came over to my house after school. She sat down on my bed, naturally, like many times before. I sat down on my computer chair, trying not to focus on the fact that she was on my bed. We were in the middle of talking about college acceptances when she got a call on her phone. I could hear the other person on the line, they were an admissions officer from one of the most prestigious universities in California. 

Her face lit up, mine did too. 

She moved down to my carpeted floor, trying to ground herself. I sat down next to her, mouthing my excitement. As she nodded along and responded with various “yes” and “thank yous”, she grabbed my hand, caressed my knuckles, then interlocked it with hers. 

I forgot she was on the phone until she said that she got in.

We stayed on the floor until the sun went down. It might have been the natural high she got from her acceptance, but she suddenly spoke about the vulnerabilities and worries in her life. She wasn’t the person that everyone, including myself, saw her as. At least not entirely. Like me, she participated in the game because that was all she knew, because it gave her comfort and stability while everything else fell apart.

It wasn’t effortless. It was a lot of fucking work. 

That evening, our academic and social personas fell down onto the floor with us, both of us trusting each other to let go, not judging one another for who we would be without it, without the sparkling glory of success, achievement, and praise. We were just there, existing in the private sphere of my bedroom. It was then that I felt our friendship transcend the rules of the game entirely.

VI.

After graduation, she spent the summer in Berkeley. Just like the AVID program had intended, she got into the college of her dreams and became a success story. While I didn’t get the same outcome, I realized that the programs we were in did have some validity in changing people’s lives. Students got to see their future open up before them, often being the first in their family to see this realized. 

But still, I wondered why this meritocratic system was so valued in the first place, why we relied on it so much for validation, and what effect this would have on us later in life. The intentions of these systems did not serve every student, even the ones that participated in them. We got pushed down a narrow funnel, made to think we were special, made to adapt to who we had to be rather than who we actually were. Under this guise of freedom and liberation, the system continually subjugates us, as students of color, into a colonial ideology, making us reach for an image of whiteness that we can never attain. 

And in the end, the only real winner seems to be the system itself. 

After the summer of 2016, just before we went off to college, she and I split ways. In the two years we had known each other, we struggled to realize that social relationships did not operate the same way tests or essays did. You couldn’t just pull an all-nighter, taking notes from a Houghton-Mifflin textbook. There wasn’t a grade to be had, no award to be won. We were dealing with another human being, whose actions didn’t always add up to something definite or explainable. It was hard for us to see it this way. As 17-year-olds, we simply didn’t have the capacity to process our feelings because no one ever taught us how to. 

The last time we saw each other, a heavy silence fell upon us.

We sat on my bed, neither one of us knowing what to do or what to say. As our high school identities dissolved into the past, we didn’t need each other anymore. She was, in her own words, “finally getting her life together”, while I was beginning to let go of the validation she gave me. Yet, we didn’t know if we could move on without the answers we gave one another.

It was then that I felt, between the two of us, there was no winner or loser. We were going our separate ways in a draw, having to surrender to the feeling of finally not knowing.