I wasn’t the student who the teachers bragged about. No honor roll. No academic trophies. And algebra? I took it so many times I should’ve earned loyalty points. And as the meme says, there’s no reason to bring that up. I’ve moved on. (Or at least I pretend I have.)
I wasn’t the next Einstein drafting brilliant formulas in the margins of my notebook. But even though I struggled in the classroom, I did have one notable accomplishment my senior year of high school: I was voted Best Personality. Looking back, that fits. I wasn’t a numbers kid. I was a people kid. An entrepreneur in the making. A creative. An idea generator with a brain that zig-zagged and built worlds out of nothing.
But because that didn’t fit neatly into the approved “smart” categories, I tucked those parts of myself away and lived mostly in the background.
And then came my teacher, Leslie Watkins. She didn’t look at me and see what I lacked. She saw what I already had. She didn’t want me to be Einstein. She wanted me to be Stephanie. She recognized creativity that I didn’t know counted. She saw leadership where others saw “talking too much.” She saw potential where others saw a problem to manage.
All the pieces I had shoved deep into a box because they didn’t fit the mold, she gently brought back into the light. And it changed me. Her belief changed me long before I learned how to believe in myself.
But algebra still kept knocking the wind out of me. There came a day when the shame of failing again felt unbearably heavy. I thought maybe everyone had finally figured out the truth: Maybe I really am a loser. Maybe I’m not smart enough. Maybe this is who I am. I was inches away from writing myself into a small story and living the rest of my life there.
And that’s when my guidance counselor stepped in. He looked me in the eye and said, “Stephanie, you are going to be successful. I know it. This algebra class does not determine who that somebody is.” Then he did something I’ll never forget. He passed me (and this guidance counselor will go unnamed because I would hate for him to get in trouble with the state of Kentucky for doing so).
The truth is it saved me. Without Leslie Watkins pulling me forward, and without that counselor refusing to let shame define me, I might have dropped out. I might have lived into the wrong story—the story of someone who wasn’t enough.
It brings me to that famous line from The Wizard of Oz: “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” But I’m asking you to do the opposite.
Believe in someone. And let someone believe in you. Don’t let failure define your future. Don’t let shame write your story. Because tucked underneath everything is an incredible human being with the potential to do things you never thought possible.
So today, blow back the curtain. Let yourself be seen. Or shine the light on someone who’s been waiting for it.
