Exceptions

By Dani Pergola ‘21

In high school, I was your run-of-the-mill honors student asshole. I truly believed I was better than everyone else. Every A I got empowered me to think I was coming out on top because I was the best and brightest of my school. I felt vaguely bad for the kids who couldn’t get grades like me, but I never felt bad for anyone who missed homework assignments or didn’t pay attention in class. That’s what you had to do to be on top, and if you didn’t do those things, you got what you deserved.

My best friend Mya was not an honors kid, and they didn’t do their work, and they didn’t pay attention in class. That was different, though. I knew Mya was smart and determined. I also knew that they had cousins to take care of at night, family issues to deal with, and a host of other circumstances that got in the way. They were the exception.

When I got to Wellesley, I planned to approach it just like high school. Do the right thing, do all my work, and get the good grades I deserved. It only took a month for me to realize I was totally fucked.

While my classmates seemed to be paying attention in class and completing their assignments with ease, I felt like I had just arrived on a different planet. Everyone seemed prepared for a world where you needed to go to office hours and start your PSETs two weeks in advance. I didn’t even know what PSETs and office hours were. Every class seemed to be way above my level, taught in language I could only halfway understand; paying attention wasn’t even an option because I couldn’t even grasp what anyone was talking about.

Things only got worse. Sexual assault and a death in my family worsened my previously high-functioning depression with the effects of grief and trauma. I stopped being able to wake up on time, and when I did get to my classes, I often fell asleep at my desk. I began to suffer from a range of physical ailments that I now know were caused by a combination of chronic sleep apnea and mono. I passed all of my classes first semester, but only because of an excused incomplete, some sympathy emails from my dean, and three consecutive all-nighters spent finishing my missing classwork. 

I was a failure. I knew it, and I felt it in every part of my body. I wanted to cry all day every day. I wasn’t doing my work, and I was getting what I deserved. I was certain everyone else knew it, too. Every time I was on my phone while everyone was taking notes, or I stayed in my seat while everyone brought their essay up to the front, I wished I could just disappear. I felt so, so alone. No one else was falling asleep in class, no one else was missing deadlines they already got extensions on, no one else was skipping office hours because they couldn’t look their professors in the eyes.

Except, as I eventually realized, a few people were. An upperclass-student who lived on my floor told me I reminded her of her first-year self. That was the first time I ever even imagined I could survive college; I hadn’t realized people like me could make it as far as she had. I almost cried when a peer from my math class confided in me a year later that they, too, had gotten a D for the semester. I joined a Facebook group for disabled students and learned that I wasn’t the only one who constantly needed extensions because of my physical and mental health. There was a community of us. Some people had ADHD or family problems or chronic physical illnesses or needed to work 30 hour weeks. Some people had a combination of all of those things. But I was not the only person who was struggling.

In high school I thought that almost everyone who didn’t do their work was lazy, with the exception of my friend Mya. I knew Mya, and I loved them, and they had an excuse. In college, I found that when I struggled, people all around me called me lazy. Professors, sibs, and even friends would often imply that if I just worked a little harder, if I could just be a little more principled, I could leave all my struggles behind and hand in every perfect assignment on time. Sometimes I wanted to scream at them, “Don’t you know I have an excuse? Don’t you know that I wish I was perfect, but I just can’t be? Don’t you know my circumstances are different from everyone else’s?” In my mind, I sometimes felt like the exception that Mya was in high school.

The truth of the matter is that there are no exceptions. I’m not lazy, and Mya isn’t lazy, and neither are any of the other people that don’t stay on top of their grades. That’s not the exception; it’s the rule. No one wants to let their PSET deadlines slip by or get emails from their professors about their attendance grade. We’re not doing this because we don’t care. It’s just that sometimes staying alive gets in the way. I wish it didn’t take being in this situation for me to learn that.

Wellesley is a strange, tough school, and falling behind can create an immense amount of shame and anxiety, but you don’t have to go at it by yourself. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself, You are not the only one who is struggling. I may not be graduating with honors like I thought I would four years ago, but I am graduating with two things I know for sure: I am not lazy, and I am not alone.

Dani Pergola ‘21 (dpergola) is trying to follow Natasha Bedingfield’s advice and feel the rain on her skin. From the April/May 2021 issue.