- So when I was little, I loved playing with Model Magic,
and if you don't know what Model Magic is,
it's a quick drying air clay.
It comes in about four colors,
so if you want any other ones,
you have to mix them yourself.
And I had come up with this really elaborate system,
it involved making people,
but the people turned to villages,
and then the villages needed homes,
so I started collecting all of our cardboard boxes,
and cutting them up,
and making sure that everybody had a bed.
That was something that was really important.
The beds were made of tissue paper,
but the mattresses were Model Magic.
(audience chuckles)
And I loved this, it was my world and my space,
and I could build, but I had just turned five at the time,
and I had to start going to school.
And school was really different than home
because home had light, and it was colorful,
and I could hear the jingling of bracelets
in the other room all the time.
But school had crappy carpeting, and bad murals on the wall,
and we had to do this thing called a reading circle.
And I didn't really understand it at first,
but all these kids seemed to know
because they brought their chapter books,
but I brought a picture book,
and as we went around in the circle
they would just read it off like it was nothing,
and when it got to me,
I stumbled over the three words on my page,
and I thought, maybe there's something off.
So I got sent to the special learning groups,
and these special reading groups,
and they were on the weekends,
and they looked kind of like school, but more sterile,
and they had white walls and high grade tables.
And I would sit there,
and I was often in these orange corduroy overalls,
and they'd put blocks, and letters,
and numbers in front of me, and eventually words,
you know, small ones like cot, mat, top, hat.
And they'd say, Isobel, "Can you read this?"
And the thing was, you know, a word has a shape,
but each shape has different ones,
and I didn't understand how the sound
would correspond to that shape,
and when you put them together
and they're meant to sound like this complete word.
And I'd get this hot feeling in the back of my eyes,
and a lump in my throat, and I felt like I was about to cry
because I was the stupid girl.
And then going back to school on Monday,
things had really escalated.
Social stigma was now attached to this.
You know, it was like, could you count to 100
or read a full chapter book?
And I couldn't do either of them,
and the point that it really hit me was when
my teacher took me aside and said, you know,
no one had asked to be my partner on our big field trip,
so I would be with her, and I felt like the stupid girl.
So I made this conscious decision from a really young age
that I would trick everybody that I was smart,
and I could read, and I could write, and I could do math.
And I think, for the most part, it worked.
You know, no one really knew it took me
until I was 12 to learn how to read.
And the way I did this, I did it in a few different ways.
So when my mom would read to me,
I would make sure to memorize
the words that were on the page,
and I would remember the picture.
So when I did public reading
it looked like I knew exactly what I was saying.
And in classes, I'd focus on the way I said words
and try to remember them too,
because I realized I could remember most things,
but I really couldn't write them.
And so I was doing this for years,
and when I got to high school,
I was really determined to keep up this image
of this girl I had created in my mind.
And, you know, I was there, I was on time for class,
sometimes I was really early,
and I had homework assignments in on time,
and I would work so hard,
but then someone caught me, someone noticed the trick,
and it was my ninth grade math teacher.
She asked me to stay after school,
and she kicked everybody out but me,
and she sat down with me and she said,
Isobel, I've taught for 13 years
in all these different places,
but I've never met anybody as far behind in math as you.
And again, I got that hot feeling in the back of my eyes,
and that lump in my throat,
and I tried to swallow through it,
and I zoned out, and I looked at the window,
and I kept thinking about how I was that girl again.
I was that stupid girl.
But then I came back and I said, okay, let's do it,
and I went every day after school.
And I learned my times tables, which I didn't know,
and I learned my fractions, which I didn't know,
and I eventually passed the class.
And I'm not really sure if it was because
we became friends, or she felt bad for me,
or if I had learned anything at all, but I kept pushing.
And I mean, there were moments
when I knew that this was wrong,
'cause, you know, I was the kid
who was scribbling out answers or questions on tests
and putting in animations there instead.
And sometimes I would stay up really really late drawing,
and then those drawings turned into paintings,
which turned into little worlds again,
and then it would be four or five,
and I'd realize I was going to be really tired at school,
but it didn't really seem to matter,
because at least I was really happy in those moments.
And senior year came, and it was time to apply to college,
and I had this same mindset.
You know, it would be proof
if I went to some really academically rigorous school,
that I had, you know, never been the stupid girl.
I was just smart.
And so I did this thing
where I started taking really hard classes,
and one was this constitutional law history class,
and around the same time I had
a bunch of deadlines for applications,
and essays, and paperwork to fill out.
And we had this one big paper for the end of our term,
and we had to do this big reading attached to it.
So when I went home that day,
and I sat down to do this reading, I pulled it out,
and I went over the first line,
and I couldn't, I didn't understand what it had said.
So I went back again, and I took a breath,
and I said, I can do this.
And I went over the same line again,
and I still couldn't read it.
And this thing started happening
where that lump in my throat was back,
and that hot feeling was behind my eyes,
and I was going over and over these lines,
I was trying to read the whole thing,
and I couldn't read any of it.
And I was so frustrated
because I'm 18 and I know how to read now.
I'm not 12, I'm not that girl.
And I'm crying, and I'm embarrassed,
and there's no one there to even see.
And as I'm crying, the crying turns to laughing
because I hated it, and I hated constitutional law.
What was I thinking?
I hated the Fourth Amendment,
which was what the paper was on.
(audience laughs)
I couldn't do it anymore!
But the thing I realized was that
there were things that I loved,
and what I loved was Model Magic.
And I mean, it wasn't that anymore, it was something else,
but it was something I could feel,
and I wanted to go back
to that girl who was five, and that girl who was 12,
and now I want to go back to that 18 year old girl,
and I want to tell her, you're not stupid.
You're a really hard worker, and you're creative,
and you'll stop at nothing,
and you were never the stupid girl, Isobel.
You were always the smart girl,
you were just chasing the wrong things.
Thank you.
(audience cheers)