Over the past couple of weeks, I've collected various archival records related to my past, the latest installment, my high school transcript.
I graduated in 1972, ranked 245th in a class of 331. Do the math, that is the 26th percentile in ranking. Such stellar work, nelle!
Notated in the upper corner of the back page was my score from standardised testing in year three: 87th percentile.
The disparity between the two sent my mind back in time. Looking at the grades, what sheer ugliness. I cornered the market on D's, yet somehow my final average was C+. Huh? Wh'appened?
Damn if I know. My first year was 4 D's and a C. My last year was best, and perhaps I saved the day with a modest performance.
Here is why I really write of this. If you know me, you know my issues. In 1968, in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972, yet hardly exclusive to those years, was the dark age of homophobia supreme. One simply did not willingly reveal any inherent gayness, or heaven forbid, even worse, gender issues.
Well, here was me, a transdyke, fearing the world finding out the truth. Here was me, who spent a majority of class lecture time letting my mind float free, away from the class in some inward and inner world, a world where gender miraculously self corrected, not by the issue going away mentally, but rather physically.
I've always been such a daydreamer, and that manifests as a learning disability. How did I make it through college?
Today, it is likely someone would see those results and realise an evaluation was in order, that a 504 plan was likely necessary. And as one dug deeper, a therapist would be recommended, and off we go. Please let it be so. Please let such at risk kids find the help they need. There are intelligent kids out there who are so troubled by their self-variation they fear others bearing witness to it.
I know better now, I'm a gay woman and damn proud of it, but in 1968, in 1972, I was scared shitless, fearing everything, including me. This is a serious case of if I knew then what I know now...
I graduated in 1972, ranked 245th in a class of 331. Do the math, that is the 26th percentile in ranking. Such stellar work, nelle!
Notated in the upper corner of the back page was my score from standardised testing in year three: 87th percentile.
The disparity between the two sent my mind back in time. Looking at the grades, what sheer ugliness. I cornered the market on D's, yet somehow my final average was C+. Huh? Wh'appened?
Damn if I know. My first year was 4 D's and a C. My last year was best, and perhaps I saved the day with a modest performance.
Here is why I really write of this. If you know me, you know my issues. In 1968, in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972, yet hardly exclusive to those years, was the dark age of homophobia supreme. One simply did not willingly reveal any inherent gayness, or heaven forbid, even worse, gender issues.
Well, here was me, a transdyke, fearing the world finding out the truth. Here was me, who spent a majority of class lecture time letting my mind float free, away from the class in some inward and inner world, a world where gender miraculously self corrected, not by the issue going away mentally, but rather physically.
I've always been such a daydreamer, and that manifests as a learning disability. How did I make it through college?
Today, it is likely someone would see those results and realise an evaluation was in order, that a 504 plan was likely necessary. And as one dug deeper, a therapist would be recommended, and off we go. Please let it be so. Please let such at risk kids find the help they need. There are intelligent kids out there who are so troubled by their self-variation they fear others bearing witness to it.
I know better now, I'm a gay woman and damn proud of it, but in 1968, in 1972, I was scared shitless, fearing everything, including me. This is a serious case of if I knew then what I know now...
1 comment:
Hopefully, today that would be caught.
I fear that too many fall through the cracks all the same.
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