It's a question I get practically every day.
It's a simple question, that should have a simple answer, but it does not. Or at least, the answer was hard to word out.
"How do you do it?"
Normally, this question is in response to my schedule of classes, work, and journalism. It's dizzying, sometimes I fall asleep at random intervals during the day (okay, often) and I show few signs of stopping.
The answer is complicated.
Growing up, my parents and I were not middle or low class specifically. I didn't have a lot of advantages over others. I never joined any teams, or really set myself apart from anyone, other than my desire to learn.
My parents decided, after hearing from my teacher at the time that I was taking French classes after school, that it was time to enroll me in a French Immersion school. Unfortunately, they forgot to talk it over with me and just went ahead with it.
I was angry, and I was stubborn. I am still very, very stubborn.
My response was to sit in class, and read under the table. My grades, normally in the high range, dropped to maybe 30 or 20 percent. In class activities, or attendance. I sat in classes, unable to make friends, and unwilling to learn how to do anything with the French language.
I started skipping class, hanging out with a bad crowd, and became the proverbial rebel. I smoked cigarettes, was sullen and surly to everyone, and the only place I really did well was gym. We were allowed to speak English there, and I ended up becoming top of the class.
My parents finally decided I was serious about failing, and pulled me out of the school, saving me from repeating grade 7, and limiting my exposure to the bad crowd, and some very unwise decisions I had made.
We moved out to New Brunswick in my grade 8 year.
During that time in the French Immersion school, my only refuge was books. I remember frequenting the library, immersed in the Young Adults Fiction section.
From these books, I learned that everyone is special in their own way, even at a time where I was clearly suffering deeply from a reoccurence of depression. I learned that there are many things possible, even if it doesn't seem like it at the time.
I also learned that tenacity is a fantastic character trait to have, especially in the toughest of times.
Relations with my parents began suffering after that incident. When we begin to grow up, we begin to see our heroes, our parents, also have flaws, just like us. They're not perfect.
But, even when I was angry with them, I still was watching closely. My mother hurt her wrist badly, should have taken time off work, but did not. She needed to work to help with finances, and it made her feel more herself, anyone could see. My father worked long hours. I remember one week I barely saw him at all. There was even a year I thought they had forgotten my birthday, and my dad popped in through the patio door, last minute, and handed me a book to read, that he had gotten for me.
My parents have flaws. So do I. But from them, I learned my work ethic. From myself, I learned that stubborness can actually make things happen.
From all of the books I read, from everything I have ever seen in life so far, my work ethic, my stubborness, and finally, my most important ally in a tough time.
I have been told all my life, on the heels of the most recent Feminist movements, from all those motivational speakers I listened to as a child, from my parents working so, so hard to provide me with opportunities I might have never had that I can do anything I want to do in life.
It just makes sense after a while that I would never see anything as impossible.
So how do I do it? I believe in my work ethic, learned from my parents, I believe in my stubborness to make things happen, and most of all, I believe in me, because I have already come so, so far. Farther than I expected sometimes.
That's how I do it.
