Names have been changed.
As I approached high school, I applied and was accepted to Brooklyn Tech, a highly competitive public high school in New York City. Brooklyn Tech is one of the eight “specialized” high schools in the city that admit students based on an entrance exam. When I scored high enough on the exam, saying yes felt like a step toward success. My family and I believed that attending a specialized high school would put me on the path toward attending a prestigious college.
I was involved in the process, but I wouldn’t say that it was “me” making the decision. It was more about the expectations that I had internalized, having learned from an early age in gymnastics that praise came from doing well in practice and winning competitions. So when I said yes, I wasn’t fully considering my happiness or wellbeing.
I have struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) since my early childhood, although I wasn’t officially diagnosed by a therapist until I turned 11. OCD is characterized by unwanted obsessions, repetitive thoughts that provoke anxiety. They are followed by compulsions, which are physical or mental actions that I feel forced to perform in order to appease the obsession, like counting and reciting words.
Achieving a feeling of success was the main goal of many of my compulsions. Success, particularly in gymnastics and in school, was something I thought about a lot and was my highest priority–placed even above my happiness. Success meant making people, specifically my parents, proud of me by upholding their expectations.
Still, I worried that the school wouldn’t be a good fit for me, unlike my middle school, which had a tight sense of community and wasn’t too far away from where I lived in Manhattan. Sure, it is an hour-long commute and there is typically A LOT of homework, but I’ll adjust to it! I told myself, brushing off my concerns. It’s a big school, but I’m sure the sense of community among the students is very strong!
A couple of weeks into the semester, during a brief break between classes, I darted through the crowded hallway, pushing my way toward the bathroom. Even though the student body should hypothetically be evenly dispersed throughout the nine floors, it felt as though all 6,000 of my peers were packed into the fifth floor.
As I waited in the bathroom line, I heard a faint sniffling coming from a large stall in the back crowded with three pairs of feet.
“I just can’t do it. How am I supposed to get good grades when Ms. M and Dr. S won’t stop assigning a million tests and projects at the same time?” one voice whined. “Ms. Merklin won’t even let me make up the test that I missed. What am I supposed to do?”
“Kara, I promise you’ll be OK. Maybe you should go talk to your guidance counselor,” said another voice.
“I’ve been to my counselor’s office like eight times already and I haven’t even spoken to her. Either she’s just not there or there is already a line of 10 kids when I walk in. She isn’t even available during my free period,” Kara said.
The students’ conversation made my heart hurt. It was only two weeks into the school year! Was it normal here for students to have such a hard time that they were left crying in the bathroom? Would I also be left all alone with no support system or help from teachers?
Bizarre, Dingy, and Overwhelmed
The answer quickly turned out to be yes, made worse by the fact that, unlike most of my peers, I didn’t have a lunch period, which made making friends difficult. Looking back, that seems absurd, but that was just the bizarre schedule I was assigned. I assumed I was just expected to eat lunch during a class, but most of my teachers weren’t OK with me doing that.
The massive school building that stretched a whole city block contributed to my feelings of isolation. Its huge size made it difficult to find my way around, which led me to be late to almost every period for the first couple weeks of school. I would wander through the halls, looking to find my classroom, trying not to let the uniformly dingy walls make me panic.
The hallways of Brooklyn Tech are not lined with lockers like most schools. Without a home base, my peers and I carried bulging backpacks up and down multiple flights of stairs everyday.
I often felt alone as I struggled against copious waves of tests and projects, despite the thousands of other students at the school. Without friends to take my mind off of my obsessions, my OCD raged and I frequently felt the urge to do compulsive behaviors.
I told my parents about how isolated I felt. Their sympathy helped, but it didn’t fix anything.
At the same time, when they’d see me poring over my homework at the kitchen table, my binders and notebooks spread out, forming a colorful yet sad collage, they’d say things like, “I’m just happy to see you working hard and putting your school work first. I’m so proud of how well you are doing at this school. I know it’s very challenging, but you’re doing great.”
Those five words, “I’m so proud of you,” helped me keep going. I thrived off of their praise; I wouldn’t let myself disappoint them.
Breaking Point
During my sophomore year, though, I reached a breaking point. Although I had a lunch break by now, I was assigned the longest and (what many consider) worst class schedule: a “one to ten,” meaning that I had to be at school from 8:05-3:35. The thought of being stuck in that horrible building for that long filled me with dread.
Thankfully, I had found a supportive group of friends, one of whom suggested I ask my guidance counselor to have my schedule changed. After many emails from my parents and me, I was finally able to arrange a meeting with her—only for her to tell me that I wouldn’t be able to get a new schedule because “schedule changes are for students with mistakes in class enrollments.”
I felt like I had been slapped in the face and left her office feeling defeated.
The first few weeks of September passed by slowly and miserably. I felt stuck. Stuck at a school I wasn’t happy at, stuck on the train for two hours each day, stuck doing hours of homework every night, even though school had just started.
By the third week of school, I already felt burnt out. During my morning commute, as the train crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, early morning sunlight poured into the train car. The glistening view of the East River forced my sullen expression into a slight smile.
My smile disappeared as the train whooshed back into the tunnel and the sunlight-soaked car was replaced by the dismal train lighting. Nerves washed over me as the train entered Brooklyn, knowing I would soon have to force my body to stand up and walk to school. I wouldn’t feel like this if I went to some other school. Maybe it doesn’t have to be like this, I thought. What if I just…left?
Battling Expectations
The idea of transferring had never occurred to me before. This new possibility sent my mind racing. I thought about how my family’s pride in me for being a specialized high school student had made me feel exactly that: special. I thought about all the people I’d met who’d nodded in approval and said, “Wow, you must be smart!” when they asked what school I attend.
What would people think of me if I left this school?
Transferring high schools was the first time that I felt totally in control of making a major life decision.
I was aware that people were proud of me because of my academic achievements, not my wellbeing or calm mental state—these were the things I sacrificed for the sake of success. But the good feeling their praise brought contrasted with how strained I felt. Mentally, I was a mess, and I knew it was time to rearrange my priorities.
The decision to transfer was one that I had to make myself. Transferring high schools was the first time that I felt totally in control of making a major life decision. It made me feel independent and grown up, but also very, very scared.
Once I was firm in my choice, I opened up to my parents. I was nervous about how they would react as I presented my many reasons for transferring. To my pleasant surprise, I didn’t need to convince them. They agreed that it would be the best decision for me, having noticed how down I’d been since school had started back up.
My parents were there to help me, but they were not able to hold my hand the whole time and give me constant affirmation. I couldn’t rely on them for confidence anymore. I had to rely on myself to be confident in the choice I had made, even when that choice meant leaving behind the friends I’d made and jumping into the unknown.
To be confident, I had to assure myself. I began to do self-affirmations to remind myself that I was making a good choice. I will be happier at my new school. I will make friends and find a community there. It will be hard and scary, but I can do it. It will all be OK. I’ll be OK. I told myself these things whenever I began to second guess myself (which was often) or whenever I began to believe I was making the wrong choice.
Unlike compulsions, I consciously chose to do these self-affirmations. Telling myself, “It will all be OK,” not only reassured me, but also made me feel proud of myself and gave me a mature sense of self-awareness.
While self-affirmations helped calm my anxiety throughout this decision-making process, at first my OCD got worse. I constantly had to follow compulsions to count the things I did, so much so that my compulsions made it harder for me to focus at school, and they made routines like getting ready for bed or leaving the house take a lot longer. I had trouble sleeping and constantly felt detached and distracted.
I was able to persist through this time by focusing on how excited I was to leave Brooklyn Tech, rather than the anxiety that I felt. I knew I had almost gotten through the tunnel and could already feel the warmth and brightness that shone on the other side.
A Fresh Start
I researched many schools as I began the process to transfer. This time, I kept in mind my core criteria, not what I thought would make me appear successful to others. I looked for schools with a small, strong community, that were closer to my house, and that had perks (like lockers and permission to have lunch off campus). Basically, the opposite of my previous school.
To my delight, many of the schools I had researched had a spot open for me. However, the school that seemed most attractive to me was Lab High School. I had attended Lab Middle School and loved my experience there. I already knew the neighborhood, the building, and that it was a small high school that emphasized student well-being and had small classes, supportive teachers, and friendly students whom I’d looked up to as a wide-eyed middle schooler. I already knew the hallways, lined with red lockers and artwork.
When Lab offered me a spot, my excitement for my new school grew each day.
I switched schools in October of my sophomore year, and it was like a big sigh of relief. I had a meeting with the vice principal before my first day at Lab, and she told me that the school values a “school-life balance.” Almost immediately, I no longer felt like my whole life was centered around school, homework, and the long commutes back and forth between my home and Brooklyn.
I knew it would take a little while to adjust to my new school and to form a community there. But even in the first few days of attending Lab, I felt a new ease and excitement.
- School
- Self-Awareness