Before college, my peers labeled me as the “smart girl.” That one adjective defined me, gave me a reputation and shaped people’s opinions of me before they even met me in person. I knew that this identity was not necessarily negative, but my feelings about it were mixed. I took pride in its generally positive implications, but at the same time, I was bothered by its one-dimensional quantification of me. This was how I largely viewed myself for the entirety of my school career, and I became used to and eventually embraced this familiar identity.

But coming to Stanford, it quickly dawned on me that I was surrounded by people who are brilliant. One common interaction I’ve noticed on campus clarifies this: a student, in a moment of self-deprecation, cries out, “I’m so stupid!” Then a friend immediately comes to the defense of their intelligence with a commonplace argument on this campus, saying, “Well, you got into Stanford.” Put simply, it’s a generally known fact that Stanford students are smart.

I was not unique in my ability to get good grades or a high score on the SAT; in other words, the “conventional” intelligence that others had so admired and commended me for in all my years of schooling was nothing new. And that, this lack of the uniqueness that I had grown accustomed to, confused the heck out of me. I got insecure. Did I even have any distinguishable or remarkable characteristics aside from this one formerly standout trait of mine? Who was I if I was no longer the smart girl with the straight A’s? And in the couple of weeks that I have been on this campus, I found myself questioning and losing sense of who exactly I was.

I think I was more afraid of the reality that now, nobody would really befriend me for my intelligence. Now, it was truly just me, myself and I out on the market — the raw and natural form, unembellished with the superiority of knowledge over my head. I suppose that was truly frightening. In hindsight, I think I may have been hiding behind this label; it was safe, comfortable and predictable. I knew that people would appreciate me, that they would need me as the brains for a project or a homework assignment. It felt good to be needed, even if it was for nothing else but this one quality.

I know that going to a prestigious university with intellectuals in every corner does not suddenly make me dumb or less intelligent. I am brilliant in my own way, as everyone here undoubtedly is. My “conventional” intelligence just became a less prominent, less important part of me, and for some strange reason, I was disturbed by that. Coming here forced me to find who I truly was outside of this identity that others had constructed for me.

But this process was stunted by a new impression of that quickly took shape in others’ eyes. A new label, “nice,” was pasted on to me, and somehow, once again, I allowed myself to be overpowered by others’ opinions. The same feelings of dislike developed at this word that was apparently so characteristic of me, and I knew that deep inside, I wanted out.
I desire more than this superficial summary of myself. If someone asked a friend of mine to describe me, I would want them to reply with this: “Oh, Betty? I can’t. There are no words that can do her justice.” It’s not that I’m trying to be difficult, but I don’t want to be someone whose worth can be summed up in three monosyllabic words: Smart. Nice. Girl.

I know that this seems like an arbitrary thing to criticize, because it’s unreasonable to ask people to stop describing people. I mean, it’s inevitable that when someone asks you about another person you know, you spit out whatever adjectives come to mind that lie within the realms of your limited vocabulary. You’re not going to sit there and say, “Oh, don’t ask me that. It’s so shallow and judgemental. You have to get a feel for them yourself.”

But people get caught up in it, they get consumed by it, they know nothing else and they begin to believe that these words are the only things that make them who they are. That’s what’s happened to me. I’ve allowed myself to be trapped by the simple, one-dimensional words people use to describe me, and I’ve become the walking dummy of their descriptions. This, in turn, has caused me to become utterly disoriented when I lost one of those words of mine in the world of Stanford University.

It appears to me that our entire lives are consumed by this practice, this desperate search to find ourselves, to define our whole being. But perhaps this is a futile game of hide-and-seek. You’ll never truly be able to understand the intricately wondrous puzzle that is yourself (I’m still struggling and trying to listen to my own advice), and that’s okay. And in the future, when you inevitably hear someone describing your existence in three monosyllabic words, just smile to yourself with this piece of knowledge in mind: you are indescribable.

 
Contact Betty Lee at bitlee ‘at’ stanford.edu.