Broken Then, Mended Now

 

Was there chemistry involved in my first crush, you ask? Who knows. It was toward the end of 5^th grade when I first discovered that, hmm, we girls did crush on boys. Maybe I discovered that because I wasn’t the only one who had a crush on Ricky. I’ll never know what happened to him because, after that school year, we both moved. And it’s not like we could track anyone on social media back then.

The crush on Ricky was the first of many unrequited journeys into that sphere. I could list vague reasons why none of those crushes panned out, or I could launch into one crush that broke me little by little.

I had a crush on chemistry. Well, not just chemistry, but science in general. And math. As a person who loved puzzles and logic games, I was all over solving whatever mysteries science and math threw at me. Algebraic equations? Bring on the puzzles! Geometry proofs? The ultimate! Chemical reactions? Pure magic!

And I was good at that. So good. Until I, inconceivably, lost interest. I’d love to say that social studies and language arts came marching in with excitement, but not really. And yet, I trudged on, making terrific grades, staying active in extracurriculars, hanging out with friends, having an amazing time in college, and not giving that math/science matter another thought. Until…

It wasn’t until I was well out of school that I happened across talk about gender bias. It was like some lightning bolt of a science experiment shot through my mind. No doubt -- none whatsoever -- I’d been a victim of gender bias.

Sometime, junior year in high school, for the thousandth time (so it seemed), I tried to give an answer in class or I tried to ask a question and/or the teacher didn’t give me the same opportunities as this one boy who was not as smart as me. I can still remember that moment when I lowered my raised hand and kept it down. In short, I checked out.

I did not love social studies. I did not love those curricular books in English. Sure, some were pretty great and, occasionally, the conversations they spurred were interesting. But those units just…moved…too…slowly.

In college, I had no interest in any major at first. Of course, I didn’t consider anything in the science or engineering fields. 

Anyway, you basically know the rest. Yes, I found my way to writing.
But I can’t help but wonder what I’d be doing now if just one teacher had called on me.

Jody Feldman came to realize that, through writing, she can explore anything in the world without fear of rejection. And she often does.