On "sugar honey iced tea" and childhood memories
Do you ever worry about being disliked and wanting to know why?
I can relate so much with ava's experience. During my school years, I would often consider myself an "unfortunately straight-A student". My friends would say I was "good at everything".
I came from a background with sports excellence before middle school and then I realized acing the academics weren't that hard either. I didn't intend to be that great at "everything" -- I wasn't even the best at every subject. But I happened to have enjoyed pretty much every subject and tried to do the best I could. With a bit of talent and exceptional luck in some areas, I was perceived as "top of the class". In other areas, I was only a little above average. So overall it seemed as though I was "good at everything". It makes sense. There was evidence to support it. But I just didn't really know how to best respond to statements like that at the time, and would be considered "proud" or a show-off.
I've been to almost half a dozen schools before college. This frequent changing of environment and classmates meant I needed to form friendships fast, and I weren't able to have many lasting, or deep connections. Changing schools, jumping between curriculums, and even states forced me to catch-up and self-study, take external classes. I had little time to hang out with friends -- I'd only just met them recently anyway. This got me a fairly "serious" and direct persona which I only later realized and worked to change.
Fortunately, I met a few kids with a similar background at some stage (who... naturally became part of my friend group) and started to see how others see me. I wasn't able to hold off my habit correcting people and stubbornly defending my opinions until I became the one on the receiving end, until I too became envious of others at times. We loved discussing the paper after an exam, and we tend to discuss questions with people who would likely get similar marks as you. We would talk about how one question got us all, how another was unbelievably easy, and sometimes, others would consider a problem straightforward when it was the one problem I was most worried of all. However, not every school had "academically gifted" students I got to be friends with. Sometimes, when we discuss about an assignment or any general school work and I would offhandedly comment on how easy so-and-so is, I would be met only with clear signs of envy and hurt from the other end.
Sometimes we dislike others for no sensible reason at all, regardless of background. Maybe I have just had a bad day and seeing anyone going about their life, oblivious of my situation could be enough as a trigger. There was no reason for them to even care -- if you were them, would you? We're emotional beings after all.
A gifted background and a bit of luck might get you great status and power, but with great achievement comes great pressure to sustain it and hold off the hate -- which is only natural to understand even if you draw conclusions without basing on personal achievement. Being more introspective and taking notice of our behavior and emotions certainly helps making sense of it all -- the rest of us do it too, after all.