I wasn’t always as full of myself as I am now. A better way of putting it may be I haven’t always loved myself so unironically, or I haven’t always been so supportive and forgiving of myself. In my interview for my position with The Ontarion, I was asked (roughly) the question “what can you bring to the team?” I could have answered that my training in two languages has left me a wide and fairly in-depth knowledge of the correct sequences of tenses, I could have said that I have experience writing on a variety of topics in a variety of forms, I could have given any of the standard “I am qualified for this job because of A, B, C” answers. Instead, (among other things) I said that I was funny. I said that I like joking around and I like being friends with the people I work with. I did what I have been doing since the ninth grade: I used being the standard “class clown” to my advantage.
Growing up and being me was pretty tough at times. It shouldn’t have been. I had, and still have, amazing parents and an extended family who love me; I was given every opportunity to grow and learn through music and sport; I made a great best friend at an early age; I had an older brother who antagonized me just enough to toughen me up; and for all intents and purposes, I was a smart kid. Despite all this, despite every opportunity for success and every nurturing word, I struggled throughout my early childhood with the unshakeable, entirely fabricated perception that everyone—friends, parents, teachers—thought I was vastly inferior to my peers, my older brother in particular. I was, for a six-year-old, incredibly depressed.
I figured that if I couldn’t be as smart as everyone else, I damn well had to be funnier. I kept our class in stitches: taking all the chalk from the class and putting it—unbeknownst to our teacher—in her coffee; having the Speak and Spell program yell, hooked up to speakers at full volume (when we were supposed to be on All the Right Type) “BUM POO BUTT-HEAD PEE” over and over again; bringing in a nerf-dart firing remote-control tank and launching them, from the hallway where we’d been sentenced, at our teacher as he went through Imparfait verb conjugations; replacing the National Anthem CD with Sum 41’s “Fatlip”; and most famously, roofing every single ball in the entire school over a span of three weeks, a crime to which we were never satisfactorily linked.
Our behaviour became increasingly more and more subversive and I fell further and further behind academically. My parents were frantic. They tried everything: Kumon, private tutoring, supplementary work, encouragement—you name it. They didn’t know that my grades were slipping because of my—never confirmed—juvenile delinquency and not just because of my stunning lack of self-esteem.
As we know, glory fades. Middle school exists in—as far as I know—only Hamilton, Ontario. Middle school is where the cool kids start playing spin the bottle at boy-girl birthday parties and weirdos like me still have their moms buy all their clothes from the kids section of Sears. It was so bad that I don’t really have much to say other than having the name “Sierra” and being intensely socially awkward when Ciara released “1, 2 Step” was a mocktail for horrible hallway run-ins with queen bees, recesses spent sitting alone in the bathroom, talking back in class, and failing algebra. Despite my lack of confidence, I still managed to correct my history teacher and was using a vocabulary irritatingly ahead of my age demographic. Notably, I once thought it was a good idea to read aloud the note my music teacher was composing for the principal from over her shoulder (detailing my behaviour and why I was being sent to the office) and correcting her spelling when she wrote “direct belligarence to authority.” It was funny, sure, but man, was I a jerk. Ms. Smalls, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I misspelled “belligerent” on an exam last year.
High School was worse because I was still really weird, I hadn’t really hit puberty, and I’m sure all the guys I had crushes on looked at me with the same mild-interest/revulsion they’d show deep-sea Anglerfish at the zoo. But, High School was better too. It marked the first time that my teachers managed to channel both my need for attention and my academic insecurity into something productive. Ms. Smith (names changed to protect innocent parties, of course) noticed that I got antsy (and therefore antagonistic) when I was ahead and bored in English class, so she would occasionally let me lead a lesson. Mr. Brown noticed that I could focus better if he let me tell one of my stories at the beginning of class or during a lull. Mr. Jones realized that I only played devil’s advocate because I liked to think critically and enjoyed a good argument. My hockey coaches realized that my ability to joke around and befriend everyone, as well as my chronic inability to take anything seriously, made me the ideal captain for a team that lost every game.
Finally, and most importantly, I had teachers who told me I didn’t have to be what I thought I had to be. I stopped taking the courses that stressed me out and caused me to act out. I started pursuing the arts more heavily. I started laughing and trusting more. I met friends who loved me not only when I was joking around, but also when I was (frequently) sad. As I became more and more confident in what I was good at, I realized that I had academic worth, that I was talented. Also, I finally successfully navigated puberty. When I graduated high school with honours, my average had jumped over thirty percent during my four years.
I still occasionally struggle with knowing when and where being funny is appropriate, sometimes my personality can be a little off-putting, and it is nearly impossible for me to have a serious conversation without cracking at least one joke. But in my first year of university, on the third floor of Johnston hall, a friend once described me as “the smart, funny girl.” Sure, it would have been nice to be called “cute” or whatever, but I felt like I had finally become something I could be proud of. I have spent an unimaginably long time just learning to be okay with who I am. And now, when my mother (who is a teacher), speaks with the concerned parents of a struggling child, she uses me as a success story.