I used to work under the VP for this big bio-pharmaceutical company to develop a small-molecule GSK-3B inhibitor for the treatment of depression. It was my first real time doing more or less an independent research project, and I couldn’t tell my head from my toes: I struggled to know what I should be looking for, interpreting the data I found, being relevant, let alone helpful, to my group. Suffice to say, I felt pretty useless.
One day, in the middle of a team debrief, just as I was trying to keep up a face that I at least somewhat knew what I was doing, he turned to us and said, “Once you get out of Stanford, you can’t be mediocre anymore. People will expect more, so you will have to be more.”
Yikes.
Not the most encouraging thing to hear as a bumbling 20-year old trying to stumble her way through undergrad and figure out herself.
See, since coming to college, I’ve taken to the term Stanford stupid: I couldn’t do a pset by myself and basically had to live in office hours every day to get it finished; it felt like things weren’t clicking nearly as quickly or as easily for me as for all my peers; and I have definitely had my fair share of classes in which I had to work my butt off just to make the curve. I didn’t fully understand the course, and my grade reflected that.
Even still, I think there are only very few occasions I would say I wasn’t proud of myself. I worked like a machine and cared less about the grade than about mastering the material in pursuit of understanding the world just a little better. In my three and a half years at this school, I have learned a wealth of knowledge and have trained my mind to think expansively and creatively. But now that I’m looking at graduation around the corner and a future of grad school, work, and whatever else I have in front of me, I wonder if that’s enough.
Whenever I go back home, I’m always really careful when people ask me what I do. “Oh yeah, I’m a student.” Where? “Just this small college a little south of San Francisco. I decided to stay local.” Oh, I used to live in the Bay Area! Maybe I know it! After a few minutes of prying, I would finally relent, and the words Stanford University would slip out. Their eyebrows would raise, and their mouth would form a little O. Wow, Stanford, huh? You must be smart then.
Hun, I’d be lucky if I fell even in the 40th percentile.
Even growing up, I would never consider myself actually smart (that was saved for my brother). Creative, spunky, loud, gutsy, sure-- but never smart. I got the grades I got and understood subjects because I buried my nose in the books, practiced math until my head swam with integrals and derivations, and mouthed vocab words and definitions to myself during workouts.*
Carrying the name Stanford certainly affords me a ton of privilege: it’s a true honor to attend this school and clash minds with such brilliant people, to have resources and opportunities that I am sure I would not have anywhere else. But it also comes with expectations.
Just from these small interactions with family friends or people at the grocery store, it’s evident that people expect me to perform; I have a higher standard of excellence people, whether employers or random people in the street, people will hold me to.
Hate to break it to y’all, but I’m nothing special. I eat too much yogurt and have a terrible sense of humor that makes no sense. I don’t fold my laundry after I’ve washed it until a few days later. I’ve messed up friendships and have to mentally kick myself whenever I think of a particularly bad ugh, why did I do that moment. I’m a mess of contradictions strapped inside a pair of chacos.
This is the part of the blog post where you expect to read some nice resolution about how I’ve come to terms being a beautiful nonsense, or that mediocrity really doesn’t matter in the grad scheme of things as long as I’m trying my hardest, or some other character development reflection. But that would just be another contrived effort of me fitting into this perceived dress of expectations that’s honestly too small for me.
*I should add, however, that I now realize how lucky I was growing up to even have the opportunity to study so wholeheartedly. My parents supported me in basically everything I did and tried hard as they could to make sure I could pursue an education that they never had the change to do when they were younger. They sacrificed comfort, sleep, even time with us, just to make sure there was food on the table and that my brothers and I could be as great of students as we were. Not to mention all the biological inclinations that endowed me to be able to concentrate and retain information.