I have been asked to speak

Last week, one of my former students asked me to speak to some of her students. She’s tutoring at a middle school, close to where I live. The students I’ll be speaking to are ones who tend to slip through the cracks of the educational system; the program where my student tutors is designed to counter that slippage. Students like these—the sixth-grader who did a 6-page book report in one weekend!—are students that I care about, passionately. So I’m honored that one of my former students would ask me to talk to them. I want to talk to that sixth-grader who did her book report with such enthusiasm, to see what she and her peers might like to hear. But as a friend suggested, I also might think about what I wanted to hear when I was in eighth grade.

In eighth grade, I would never have guessed that someone would ask me to speak to eighth graders in the future. For my seventh-grade yearbook, the staff staged a picture of me staggering under an armload of every single textbook, binder, and notebook from my locker. Look how much schoolwork she does! In the picture I wore baggy jeans, not fashionably saggy or tight, and a Cosby-like sweater vest (thanks, Nick Hornby) and, more cause for squirming, let’s just say that my hair did not escape mid-80’s mulletdom.  Who wants to be the kid who’s got so much homework to do that she practically lives in a shoe? Who is willing to go on permanent record as one of those kids? Apparently, I was.

Though it was incredibly painful at the time, I am so glad that I was that kind of kid. I am glad that I managed to love school, despite how horrible I felt about myself, and my sweater vest mulletdom, my solitude at school dances, my one red Valentine’s Day carnation delivered on a day when others seemed to have dozens. I am glad that reading and writing and art stayed as elemental for me as breathing, water, food. I am glad that school did not manage to take away from me what I had loved ever since I was a child.

In fact, at least for one-seventh of my day, during seventh period, I felt that it was okay to be smart. I was in a “gifted” program for that part of the day, which supposedly made me one of the school’s “smart kids.” I know now that these programs are somewhat controversial. But we read our poems and essays to each other; we went to see professionally-produced plays; we performed in historical skits that we had written ourselves; we went on field trips where we splashed ventolin inhaler 100 mcg through tidepools and sang campfire songs under the stars. I was with students who had to be “smart” to get in, who were smarter than me, and whom I respected for being smart.

And this, it turns out, was something like how college felt. Unexpectedly, college freed me to be smart because my smartness was already assumed. It was no longer the thing that set me apart from the rest, made me strange or ridiculous or comic or unattractive. (I did lose sweater vest and the mullet, which may have helped.) Instead, smartness became the foundation from which I had to distinguish myself even further.  We were all smart. So what? What were we going to do with that? Even though the school felt huge, even though many of my classes had at least a hundred people, I was so excited to feel part of an intellectual community. The school felt too large, too diverse to have one popular community. Ideas and ideals were important. Studying was a huge part of social activity; it wasn’t something that only the nerds or the oddballs did every night, for hours. Heck, it was Berkeley—so yes, you could say that we were all nerds.

But at our best, we freed each other to be passionately intelligent. An environment like that is a gift beyond price, and I carry it with me always. I believe that every student, not just the ones whom a system has designated as “smart,” deserves this kind of community, and this kind of freedom. For me this kind of education was a privilege, but I want it to be a right.

I think I will tell the students about that.

And I will tell the students that speaking to them made me see a pattern in my own life. I have been invited to speak in a number of settings, now: academic conferences, book clubs, discussions about teaching, mentoring sessions for graduate students, public libraries, a university class about women of color and a university class about public memory, even a graduation ceremony.

I have discovered in the last two years that I like public speaking. Who knew? I like how public speaking demands me to be comfortable, to feel strong in my body and heart, as myself. I like how public speaking asks me to connect with my audience, and invite them to respond. All of those demands mean that public speaking can be the scariest place to be, but also the freest.

In eighth grade, I would never, ever have guessed that people would want to hear what I have to say.

But I have been asked to speak.

And so I have been thinking about how to prepare my voice.