It’s not that I’m just a self-absorbed, AP-tested millennial conditioned to conflate the value of my intellectual life with how well I do in school, but, hell, I kind of am. That didn’t stop the honors college from kicking me out, though.
I am no longer a Barksdale Scholar; I will not serve as student director; #MSUThesisTopics (a trending topic I helped push with my friends via OleMissProblems) might help an especially creative State student, but writing an undergraduate thesis isn’t a reality meant for me anymore.
It still hurts. Late at night, in those 30 seconds before sleep, when I let past humiliation wash over me like water from a faucet over a paper towel, it’s the most spectacular failure of my life — and all this squirming guilt peppered with flashes of self-loathing because my GPA fell some tenths away from the 3.5 required to remain in good standing over there at the SMBHC.
The Sally McDonnell-Barksdale Honors College isn’t at fault. It has to maintain some standards, after all, some academic exclusivity that guarantees that at least some of those who study within it are dedicated not only to expanding intellectually, but also maintaining the nuts and bolts of scholarship, the numbers I thought I would have achieved to save my GPA over the summer, simply because I am me. I, like many students within the honors college, was taught I would always win, by virtue of no reason other than before college, we always had.
Our high school résumés, at their core, were mostly the same: leaders of clubs that don’t matter anymore, 1 percenters of test scores we forgot we lost sleep for, valedictorians of classes of people we only see when they crop up on Facebook or pass us inside Walmart at home. Our asses, dusted with the lips of past educators, sit squarely upon praise for the precociousness we don’t yet recognize has evolved into pretentiousness until we fall off of it and smack onto our faces, convinced that we’ll bleed for it forever and never recover, since the thought of failing seemed inconceivable in the first place.
And it isn’t to discount the achievements, over and otherwise, of students privileged enough to reap the awards of kicking butt scholastically, but I couldn’t help but wonder why I cared so much. I told myself the last $8000 I’ll never see of my suspended scholarship stung the most, convinced myself the loss of free printing was my biggest inconvenience.
Whatever lies I told, honest self-reflection revealed to me that my academic success was suction-cupped onto my identity, like some sort of scholarly Squidward whose presence would ultimately turn malignant. I lost, I realize now, what I perceived as the only proof of my intelligence and value as a student, and at my core, I felt delegitimized. God forbid, I told myself, self-righteous and sour, I pour my energy into hustling for this place for three years of my life, only to have to restructure my entire attitude toward my collegiate existence when its presence is snatched away from me. Clarity didn’t happen until I forced myself to realize I was more than someone who used to be worthy of a scholarship — more than the role I played in that spot — and that was true while those roles were mine, anyway.
Grades, to echo feminist icons the Powerpuff Girls, are not the most important determining factor to consider when judging the value of a person’s life, and my severance from the honors college doesn’t represent salt sown into the soil of my growth as a person. I am a whole individual, and an intelligent one, and neither I nor anyone else need any title or honor for intellectual validation. I am thankful for my time at the honors college, which was an extraordinarily happy one, but I climb daily toward fast-approaching closure. I wish I could still represent the incredible institution and enjoy the community there, but I’m comforted by the knowledge that I lost, humbled by the fact that I fell on my face and was completely denied something that I wanted.
And I’m confident that I’ll be better for it.
Sierra Mannie is a senior Classics major from Ridgeland.
