on being the small fish

In high school my chemistry teacher always used to say “the average kid will make it in life” and this came as an encouragement to (by definition of average) most people in the class. I, however, was never average in high school (except in history, eng lit, eng lang, and art – you should see a pattern there- where i was truly average, but still in the top class). I excelled in all my science and math-type classes, was always in the top 3 of “GPA” each school term, was never a part of the “clappers association” during prize-giving days (wow, we were so funny in high school, how did we even come up with these things?), i had too many leadership positions in the school, the teachers liked me, you get the gist. I should however be clear on one thing – I was never a cool kid. In fact, I might consider myself the antithesis of a cool kid. I didn’t play sport. I was a teacher’s pet. I loved rules and did not understand why others couldn’t follow them. Tbh, while I have loosened up a lot more, I still wonder why some people can’t follow rules. I guess some parts of my stiffness will never go away – some things never change. Anyway… back to my high school chemistry teacher… so you can imagine why I could never relate to “the average kid will make it in life.” In fact, the phrase made me feel a little isolated at times so that I didn’t like it. And then college came along. I went to a great school. And I quickly discovered that I was a very tiny fish in a gigantic ocean. I felt lost. I felt that I had not been prepared at all for such an environment, and all of a sudden the phrase “the average kid will make it in life” made sense to me. I was not used to asking for help. I was not used to not immediately understanding everything. I was not used to showing that I did not immediately understand everything. When professors reached out to me to check in and offer help, I said no. I was not used to needing help, and I was determined to figure everything out on my own, as I had always done. But that was the problem. The average kid would have known how to do that. The average kid would have know how to ask for help, when to ask for help, and felt much more comfortable doing so that I did. They would have had their success-path-outside-of-themself figured out and I had just never learned how to do that. You’d think that after a year of this humbling in college I would finally learn to ask for and seek help, but I did not. I was just so set in my ways of figuring things out on my own that I remained like that pretty much the whole 4 years of college. But there was a difference – I was conscious of what was going on in my head and what my reasoning was. The first step is acknowledgement. My issue shifted from “I don’t know how to ask for help” to “I think it’s too late to ask for help”, and that latter one is something that I’m still working on but I’d like to think I’ve gotten better with over the last 7 years. But in a way I think I also ended up overcorrecting from being someone who feels they can do it all themself to being someone who feels incredibly inadequate. If you have been in a high-achieving environment you might be very familiar with this concept of “imposter syndrome”. I went through it, and I still go through it. As time has gone on and as I have met many different people who are masters of their trades or professions, I have come to see so clearly how tiny i really am. Now this might be strange seeing as I am now at a top 4 business school phd program, but being here (and the build up to being here) has taught me how little i know and how much i will never know, an amoeba in the ocean. at best. I constantly feel (and am actually convinced) that I am the dumbest person in most of the rooms I have sat in over the last 2.5 years of my life, and there is a beauty and a sadness in that. Anyway… why did i even start this post? “The average kid will make it in life.” I hear these words repeated in my head at least once a week. 90% of the time they leave me defeated because you know…”its too late to ask for help.” but the other 10% of the time they are an encouragement. a call to act and learn. what makes the average kid a success? She knows how and when to ask for help. She realises that the world is too big to carry on her own shoulders. The world’s questions are too big and too difficult for her to answer on her own. She knows how and when to collaborate. She knows how and when to work alone. And I am learning. i need balance. “The average kid will make it in life.” I wish Mai Mhishi knew just how much her words stuck with me. 9 years later and here I am.