I suddenly remember the first time I failed.

It wasn’t the first time I had made a mistake, it was the first time I felt like I had failed. My 4th grade teacher gave me a C in science and my mom was shocked, her jaw dropping to the floor and looking back a C wasn’t even that bad. But then my teacher said “yeah, science is not for her. You won’t study science when you grow up, you’re not good at it”

Only 10 years into my life and this man was already twisting my growth mindset. How messed up is that. Science had been wonderful at one point. My grandma used to be a science teacher so growing up, she would have us do science experiments with her. I would watch as liquid crystallize into solid and my bare feet hit the surface of corn starch mixed with water, then sunk through. But after my teacher, the supposed judge of my intellectual and personal growth, made that comment, my mind started to spin when I saw numbers and graphs. Anything science made my palms sweaty.

Well anyway, fast forward and my resilient self eventually excelled at high school science and then got a Bachelors in Science from UM so I’d like to say it’s not that his words weren’t that impactful after all, it’s that I can push through other people’s expectations more than I give myself credit for.