I never knew until I was in high school that I was a disappointment to my mother. I had always been a good student, and my mother made very clear that education was a ticket to a better future. From grade school on, I studied hard and always got good grades. I loved school, loved reading through the school year and through the summer. I was put into advanced classes, and I always liked learning new subjects. Besides, I never got into trouble for anything. I was not a "rebel" but someone who was always on time and who never complained about school. In fact, I liked talking about my subjects. And so, I suppose, I thought I was pretty much the perfect daughter. Unfortunately, I found out, I was pretty good at conveying the impression that I was a smart aleck. When I discovered that others did not consider me as wonderful as I considered myself, I made a project of trying to change.
What needed to be changed were my awareness of my surroundings aside from academic work and my expectation that academic performance alone would make me special in everyone's eyes. A cousin of mine was in the same school as I was, though not in the same classes. At the end of one period when we got our report cards, I got all As except for one B. My cousin got one A, three Bs, and one C. At a family gathering, everybody made a big fuss over her A, which was the first one she had ever gotten in that particular subject (math); she had understood one particular area of math well even though it was very
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