Names of people, places, and institutions have been changed.
It was my first night at Camp Woods, where all Horter Academy freshmen are brought on their first day on campus. In two days, I’d start classes at Horter, my new boarding school in New England. But for now, I was hiding under a thin blanket in a wooden cabin with ants crawling across my plastic mattress.
Earlier that day, I had moved into my dorm, successfully avoiding small talk with most of my new peers and their parents. I hadn’t taught myself how to talk to White people yet, and I was unwilling to make a bad first impression.
The only White person I was relatively familiar with at that time was my English teacher from my old school, and although he worked in a school in the Bronx with mostly Black and Hispanic children and staff, he didn’t seem too fond of the demographic. He once angrily remarked that we “should consider ourselves lucky” that he travels all the way from Brooklyn every day to come teach us “because no one else would.”
When I’d stepped onto the school bus headed to Camp Woods, all I could focus on were the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Lululemon-shorts-wearing girls occupying each seat. My eyes fell to my army green Burlington shorts, and the urge to abandon everything familiar fell over me. My baggy T-shirt felt suffocating, and my teal dunks flopped around my feet like clown shoes. My eyes darted from corner to corner until they settled on a girl who looked like me. I sat next to her, our braids gravitating toward each other as if they shared some sort of magnetic affinity. We sat in silence for a while before I mustered the courage to speak.
“Hey,” I said, awkwardly drawing the word out. “I’m Mariam. What’s your name?”
She flashed a braces-filled smile at me, her dark eyes disappearing behind her cheeks as she spoke. Latifah was also from New York, and we found out we were both African. As we conversed, I felt my muscles unwinding. She and I actually weren’t that similar at all, but she ended up being my closest friend at Horter Academy. The feeling of security I found with Latifah was the exception during my first weeks, months, and even years of high school.
The first week of school, I found myself at a lunch table surrounded by other students and a teacher chaperone. Since it was our first day, we had to introduce ourselves. Emma, to the right of me, was from Connecticut and loved hiking; Lewis was from Massachusetts and spoke French fluently; Giovanni was an international student and loved to travel. I introduced myself next.
“Hi, everyone. I’m a freshman, I’m from New York, and, uh, I like reading.”
That was easy, I thought.
“Wow, you’re from New York? That’s so interesting, what part?”
“New York City.”
“Which borough?”
“The Bronx.”
There was a gut-wrenching silence. The other students avoided meeting my eyes, and I felt a hollow pit forming in my stomach. It was like someone had reached their arm down my esophagus with a hefty ladle and scooped out everything inside. My hands began tingling, and everything sounded fuzzy, like my ears were filled with cotton. Why did they stop talking? What are they thinking? My stomach hurts.
I went to the restroom and stayed there. This became routine for me at lunch: “going to the bathroom” and not returning.
The Bronx Girl
If I’d wondered what the other students were thinking when I said “the Bronx,” it soon became clear. I was asked flippantly whether I lived in the projects, and people would assume I got into frequent fights or arguments. Eventually, I began to avoid all the parts of me that could feed the stereotype of the “Bronx girl.” If someone asked what my mom’s job was, I would say she’s “a nurse” instead of a certified nursing assistant. If someone joked about food stamps, I would zone out.
Over time, my wardrobe changed from baggy jeans and Jordans to floral skirts and tennis shoes. I told myself it wasn’t about my own internalized shame, but about refusing to allow them to judge me. If I told my friends I lived in the projects, I knew they’d look at me differently, and why should I have to deal with that? But the truth was, I had already been ashamed of living in the projects and being government dependent before I came to Horter.
I’d ended up at this $75,000-a-year boarding school through an academic program that helps promising, low-income students of color gain admission to prestigious high schools and boarding schools in New York City and across New England. The program accepts only high-achieving students and prepares us for the academic pressure of attending a top high school.
At first, I was excited to go to a new school, away from everyone who knew me and everything I knew, to build an identity of my own. However, people at Horter expected things of me that were in stark contrast to what was expected of me by my parents and at my charter school: I got the sense they expected me to struggle, to be negligent, and to fail. I was never one to be complacent with failure, and I certainly couldn’t have given off the impression that I was. Their assessment of my capabilities made me question what I could really handle. I questioned if I was really as smart as everyone made me out to be, or if I was just smart for a “Bronx girl.”
The most notable difference between Horter and my middle school is undoubtedly the racial and ethnic composition. Since my old school was primarily Black, we distinguished people by their personalities and attributes because those were the only obvious things separating us from one another. At Horter Academy, I am not the quiet girl, the Guinean girl, or the smart girl, but just a Black girl, one of the few on campus. And I’ve always been smart, but until this point, I’d never had to put energy into proving it. Now, suddenly, I had to justify my presence, not only to my peers but to myself. I dreaded nothing more than being looked at as the diversity admittance.
For some time, I shouldered the burden and excelled. But even when it paid off, I got reactions that struck me. Sophomore year, I wrote a poem that won a class competition. Then I overheard my classmates talking one day in the library.
I began pushing myself to socialize outside of my comfort group, without code-switching. It turned out that people actually liked me.
“Who won the poetry contest in your class?”
“Mariam did. It was actually really good.”
Another girl walked into the library and waltzed into their conversation. She was a friend of mine who also happened to be Black.
“Wait, Mariam won? I didn’t know she was good at English. Is she smart?”
“Yeah. She was in my English class last year. She’s good.”
“That’s crazy.”
So, even Black people here just assume I’m dumb?
In geometry, I was the girl people asked questions of and came to for help on homework. It made me feel good; it made me feel worthy. But if I accidentally said the wrong answer, like anyone else would, I held my breath. Why was it that I could be the “smartest in the room” and still feel so unsure of myself? It wasn’t a case of impostor syndrome—I knew I deserved to be there. I just couldn’t stop obsessing over making sure everyone else saw what I saw in myself.
Burnout and Boredom
Until the last few months of my sophomore year, I was a burning flame, but the motivation I had to prove everyone wrong evaporated. I was exhausted, frustrated, and depressed. All in all, I just quit trying. I figured that this way, I couldn’t be disappointed: Failure, to me, is an outcome of attempts, which I had stopped making. Showing up to class late became second nature; I put off homework assignments to the last minute, and I refused to study for tests. Knowing I didn’t try was my only consolation, and it never failed to comfort me.
I spent the summer that followed at home, mindlessly scrolling on social media and Libby under my thick comforter, even though my apartment was overheated. Sometimes, I would go across the street to hopelessly swing on the swingset while listening to sad music. The utter devastation of my life at that point led me to notice I had developed a habit of avoiding discomfort. I said no to making plans, scared I wouldn’t know how to perform normality because, frankly, I didn’t even know who I was. I stopped interacting with my siblings, and I neglected all the hobbies I used to enjoy. I lost myself in trying to protect myself, and I was so dreadfully bored.
When I thought of school, my stomach turned, and when I tried to name my friends, my mind went blank. I kept thinking: If only I could be myself. After a lot of self-reflection, I ultimately understood that I needed to stop thinking in hypotheticals—I could be myself. But it would require a willingness to be uncomfortable.
When junior year started, I began pushing myself to socialize outside of my comfort group, without code-switching. It turned out that people actually liked me. I started making more friends of all ethnic and racial backgrounds. I could still recognize the differences in our experiences, accents, and mannerisms, but those stopped being such a huge deterrent for me. Considering that at least 75% of the students at my school are White, making the effort to connect with them made life there so much more tolerable.
Not My Job
I made that decision eight months ago. Since then, I find myself being way more inquisitive and bold when it comes to having individual conversations, letting go of the panic that I won’t be able to relate. I was shutting off a whole world of people by letting my defeatist attitude and negative experiences control me. I found lifelong friends in people who don’t resemble me in many aspects, but that makes them more interesting. I carry this sentiment with me outside of Horter, too, and life is much brighter this way.
I’ve also ousted the humiliation that I attached to being from the Bronx. Once, shortly before a school vacation, I was sitting across from my friend for our daily sit-down dinner when our table head asked, “So where is everyone going for break?” Everyone answered the question, their responses all followed by a few investigative inquiries, until it was my turn.
“I’m just going ho-”
“Where, the Bronx?” my friend said, loudly laughing at her jab.
The table fell into an anticipatory silence. Then, I replied:
“Yeah, that’s where I live.”
The people at our table all looked in her direction, almost as confused and disturbed as I was. That moment was nothing short of vindicating. It felt like I had finally peeled off the layers of contrition that had oppressed me over the last two years.
It’s hard not to internalize the things people say to you or the things you think people think of you, but when I realized that it’s not my job to change people’s perception of me, I relieved my mind from so much noise and indignation. Being Black, female, African, and poor will always be hard, but I can’t control the world, and the world certainly cannot control me. So, permitting myself to take up space has allowed me to grow in unimaginable ways. I’m not the most popular, the smartest, or even the quietest girl at Horter; however, I found a group of friends that value me, I got a counselor to talk me through my struggles, and I try my best to be the best I can be, so that is enough, at least for now. There will come a time in everyone’s life when they find that empty seat right next to everything they wish for, but it takes time, effort, and finding out who you are.