I’m not what you expect. Looking at me 5 years ago, no one would ever predict the person I would become. I was that strange overachiever with frizzy hair and too many skirts. I listened to classical music and was just plain weird. I wore a dress on a field trip to an amusement park one time; I don’t even know what I was thinking.


But now, you wouldn’t even recognize that girl. I was never the girl you expected to listen to Fall Out Boy at volumes I’ll regret when I’m 60 and deaf. I wasn’t the girl you expected to whisper about quick kisses in bathrooms and making out with boyfriends and dreams of sex until late into the night with half a dozen friends. I wasn’t expected to be the girl hiding jagged scars behind the odd combination of short shorts and black t-shirts featuring nerdy jokes that only make sense to book-worms and bibliophiles.


No one expected me to be anything but an overachiever. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still an overachiever, but that’s not all there is to me anymore. I use SparkNotes on my AP English homework. When I procrastinate on my reading assignments, I just read another book for fun. I go out with my friends on a Saturday night and talk about marching band.


I’m not the cookie cutter nerd anymore. I’m not the frizzy haired overachiever in skirts. I’m just the self-proclaimed nerd with unruly curls and too many shoes.


I’m not what anyone expected. But I’m still me.