Pressure

Reading Generation S.L.U.T. last week refreshed in my mind something I’ve been trying to ignore for a number of years: pressure.

Pressure put on high school kids by their parents is a central theme in the book, and it was yet another of those things about my high school experience I’d been trying to forget. My parents were, and are, better than those of most of my peers in terms of not placing obscene demands on me; I never had to be quarterback and class valedictorian all in one. They let me take a different path. But even on this path, there’s pressure.

I, like my closest friends, didn’t fit in traditional education despite what most my teachers saw as pretty exceptional intelligence (they were confused, clearly). My lack of application to assignments was an endless source of frustration to teachers from early on in my schooling, and most of them eventually gave up and let me read in the back of the class or whatnot. Typical “gifted and talented” stuff, and nothing to brag about.

Far from it. With rejection of traditional education comes an onus entirely different than the traditional “4.2 weighted GPA, getting into an Ivy on scholarship” smart kid worries. If you blow off school but still want to be recognized, you have to credential yourself with incredible accomplishments at a young age. The people around me, I think, have all felt this pressure. That’s why my closest friends, at not even 20, have things like acting as Chief of Staff for a Senator and starting successful companies already under their belts.

I’ve done alright with what I’ve accomplished thus far, but I still feel pressure to do something more while I’m young enough for it to be notable – essentially, to do that thing that would justify my avoidance of traditional paths. Depending on how I approach it, that means taking on a lot of risk.

But I’m not really interested in musing on my situation. I’m interested in hearing if other people out there who’ve taken a non-traditional educational path have felt this same pressure to do great things early.