During second semester of my senior year in high school, I sat down at a computer and took the math placement test for the university that I would be attending this fall. There were five possible course placements and when I got my score I was put into the third option. There were two courses above mine, and two courses below mine. Smack dab in the middle of the sea of students that will be flooding the campus in the fall. I was starting the school year as average.
I then began to realize that I have always been average. (I’m not writing this to get sympathy or anything like that. I promise there’s a happy ending. You’ll just have to keep reading.) But seriously, I have always been put in the middle track for all of my classes and I guess in life. For high school I placed into the accelerated math and english classes as opposed to the college prep or honors classes. I wasn’t a die hard fan of the football games but I went to a significant amount. Not as many as some but not as few as others. My score on the ACT was average compared to the rest of my peers. I’m an average height for someone my age. I spent a lot of nights by myself and wasn’t invited to a lot of hangouts or parties but I had a decent amount of friends and hung out with them at lunch and after school. Needless to say, in high school I was average.
And being average is the best place to be. My mom and I used to joke about me being average. We used to say, “you can only go up from here”. But that’s a load of crap because, if my accelerated math course taught me anything, you can also fall below the average. Embracing my average-ness was the tricky part. I tried really hard to rise above and pushed myself more in school and put myself out there to make more friends. Eventually all the effort became exhausting and I ended up right where I started.
Everyone needs that spot though. No matter how bad things are going, or how good they’re going, things always have to come back to the middle. (I learned that from a TV show.) If I work to be above average or end up sinking below average, I always come back to the middle. And, the middle, is right where I want to be.
I found my place.
When the students start piling into campus in the fall, I’ll be standing right in the middle of all them. I’ll be waiting to see which way my new college life will take me. Will I go below or will I rise above? The important thing is to remember that no matter how good or bad things get, they’ll always fade back to the middle of the spectrum. And when you add all your lows and highs together and then divide by two, you get that happy medium. The average.
When the students start piling into campus in the fall, I’ll be standing right in the middle of all them. I’ll be waiting to see which way my new college life will take me. Will I go below or will I rise above? The important thing is to remember that no matter how good or bad things get, they’ll always fade back to the middle of the spectrum. And when you add all your lows and highs together and then divide by two, you get that happy medium. The average.
-L
