What Middle School Taught Me About the Literary World

Journey to Publication - Weeks 10 & 11

Several months ago, I impressed a colleague with my knowledge of geometry.

For those of you who don’t know, I run a college consulting firm with a tutoring arm. While we work primarily with high school students, we’ll occasionally get a middle school tutoring client who will ask us to tutor more elementary subjects such as geometry. As my math-major boyfriend will tell you, geometry never comes up again in more advanced math courses and is inserted into the school math curriculum either to cause confusion to students who will have forgotten all of Algebra 1 by the time they move onto to Algebra 2 or as an experiment in teenage patience. I, for one, never quite understood the purpose of geometry, yet, unlike all other math courses I was subjected to in middle and high school, I remember it impeccably. So when I took over a tutoring session for my colleague who, like every other adult, had forgotten the nuances of proving triangle congruence, I left her perplexed: how did I—an English major who had not taken a math course since high school—remember 8th grade geometry so well?

Because I am an English major and a writer, there is, of course, a story behind my odd mastery of geometry.

In the 8th grade, I was placed into 9th period math with Mr. Sohcahtoa (that is not his real name, of course, yet in the interest of protecting his privacy, he shall henceforth be known as Sohcahtoa). Mr. Sohcahtoa, like many math teachers before him, wore large round glasses and had a quirky chirrup of a laugh that reminded me of Daffy Duck. He graded tests with a red disposable fountain pen and led the middle school math team with the nerds who were then made fun of but who now earn a million dollars working for hedge funds. But it was neither on account of Mr. Sohcahtoa’s kind smile that I often found myself lingering in the classroom after school (though he was probably one of the kindest teachers I’ve ever had in my life), nor because I particularly struggled with the material—it was, rather, because Mr. Sohcahtoa, magnanimous as he was in making you feel all right about stumbling through a proof, had an even more good-hearted son. Intoxicated as I was by Victorian literature back then, I immediately fancied myself a sort of Jane Eyre chasing after her Mr. Rochester (though, thankfully, this rather uncouth thirteen-year-old did not have a mad wife hiding in his attic).

If you’ve ever had a middle school crush, you might recall that direct conversation with the target is not an option. Teenagers who find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another must engage in subterfuge. So instead of making my feelings known to my Rochester, I availed myself of Mr. Sohcahtoa’s after school extra help hours on a daily basis in the hopes that, in outpacing even Euclid in geometry prowess, I might impress the beautiful boy who stalked into the geometry classroom every day right after the dismissal of 9th period. At times, Mr. Sohcahtoa would step aside to help another student with a problem that I pretended not to understand and leave me under the direct tutelage of Rochester; on such occasions, I was over the moon with adulation, thinking that, perhaps, on such a day, he would finally acknowledge my existence (though this day never came).

Sometime around December of my 8th grade year, the group of girls I had considered my friends up until that point began to catch on to my singular adoration of Rochester and, given his unfortunate classification as a “math nerd,” began to bully me for my choice of men (or boys, I should say). I was ejected out of the friend group after a series of events that is probably recounted in some terrible YA novel and was henceforth known to the entire 8th grade class as a “nerd.” Having no one to turn to, I doubled down on my quest to win Rochester’s love and attended after school geometry help so many times that I am sure my parents were convinced that I had swapped my writerly soul out for a more technical one. No amount of vicarious heartbreak lived through literature, then, could have prepared me for the revelation that Rochester did not like me—he liked the popular girl!

I was distraught. Instinctively, I ran to my former friends for advice, only to be shut out once again because, in their eyes, I was not good enough to pass their arbitrary litmus tests. What was worse was that someone else in my geometry class had told my math teacher that I had eyes for his son. I was horrified, to say the least, and didn’t show up to 9th period geometry for about a week before the school sent a note to my parents telling them that I was skipping last period to sit alone in front of my locker and stare absently up at the gyrating fan on the ceiling. For the next month, I didn’t have the nerve to show up to after school geometry extra help sessions, but at least I had mastered geometry so well by then that I didn’t seem to need it. Around that time, Mr. Sohcahtoa called me over one day after class, looked at me with his kind blue eyes, and told me that I shouldn’t feel embarrassed—on the contrary, he was delighted that someone thought fondly of his son.

I will never forget the look on that kind old man’s face when he told me that he was happy that I liked Rochester. It was the look of someone who, in the final hours of his life, learns that he has just been blessed with a grandson. It was a look that will always be my model of altruistic kindness even if so few people emulate it today. So that old man gave me hope that something might happen between me and his son, and I pranced into the second semester with a newfound confidence that led me to approach the popular girl directly.

Charlotte was an aspiring actress with curly blonde hair and a plump heart-shaped face that seemed to pulsate every time she spoke. I had never had the nerve to approach her, especially not since the incident with my friends through which I had been dubbed a nerd, but a transitory burst of aplomb one afternoon gave me the courage to march up to her locker and divulge my situation to her. I am sure that she laughed at me (I am now also laughing at myself), but she made it clear that she a) had no interest in Rochester and b) had no direct influence over his feelings; what she could offer me, however, was some advice on how to become so irresistible that I was sure to attract him within months. I remember every minute change she suggested to my appearance and, that summer, I took her advice as seriously as a churchgoer might take the advice of a priest in a confessional: I went to the eye doctor and traded my pink cat’s-eyed glasses for contact lenses; I used my babysitting money on a shopping spree at Abercrombie & Fitch, where I purchased foreign-looking objects such as skinny jeans and mini skirts; I went jogging every morning to lose my post-puberty belly fat; I reached out to girls I couldn’t stand just to say that I had an “in” with the popular crowd; I watched YouTube tutorials on how to use a curling wand (still can’t do this one); and I stole my mother’s tube of mascara to apply to my eyelashes every morning in the girl’s bathroom.

If you’ve ever seen a high school movie post-makeover shot, you’ll know exactly how I felt when I dominated the hallways coming into school after the summer break. Everybody stared. I had always been the nerdy kid with unruly dark brown hair and glasses who showed up to school in corduroy pants, old t-shirts, and Crocs. Now, prancing down the hallway in skinny jeans, Converse, and full face of makeup, I am sure that the entire freshman class thought that aliens had captured me and replaced me with the upgraded out-of-this-world version of myself. I had lost about fifteen pounds, learned a thing or two about dressing myself, and gained the confidence to make friends. Most of all—I was pretty! There was no doubt in my mind that Rochester would want me now. I had done everything that had been asked of me down to the nail. I had played by all the rules of the middle school world and now, heading into high school, I could finally reap the fruits of my beautification labors.

But even after every edit I had made to my identity, Rochester still did not want me.

I grew somewhat depressed that year. If you are my parents reading this, I’m sure you remember, and now you know why. And it was no longer just about a boy. I was puzzled at how the world worked. I was puzzled that I had taken every single step—every single instruction from the authority in being liked—and had still been rejected. What more was there to do? I had completely destroyed myself, spending time on petty endeavors such as putting on makeup and hanging out with girls who drove me up a wall when, really, all I wanted to do was to sit around and do my thing: read and write and not care what people thought of me. So, gradually, I gave up everything that was not working in my favor (though I still credit Charlotte to this day for inciting my lifelong love of running). I stopped making an effort to be around people I despised. I abandoned the curling iron and restored frizzy hair to its natural wavy state. I sold my Converse online and wore comfortable shoes that I actually liked. Slowly, I lodged the thought of Rochester to the back of my mind and focused on my literary endeavors, retreating into books when the exterior world had treated me cruelly—a tale familiar to any serious bookworm.

I can’t tell you at what point precisely I stopped thinking about Rochester, but it was not long after that I wandered into cafeteria one afternoon during my senior year of high school to find Rochester occupying an entire central cafeteria table with a collection of balloons and a row of giant cookies, each bearing a letter in yellow icing that collectively spelled “PROM?”

I laughed, passing by the table reserved for the lucky girl who had won the affection of the man whom I had once lost so much sleep over, so sure that she would emerge from the cafeteria line in seconds to claim her prize that I was infinitely confused when Rochester came up to me. At that point, I had not spoken to him in about a year, and I had already secured another prom date, so I never could have predicted that those balloons and cookies were meant for me.

Looking back, I still laugh at the irony of the situation. I had moved grandiose mountains and turned over half the earth to win Rochester’s affection—it was only when I had stopped trying that not only had I captured his attention but that I had found myself with options! I was now in the peculiar position of having the luxury to turn him down! And what a joy it was to strut assuredly out of that cafeteria, secretly satisfied.

I remember this story now because it has come to my attention that the publishing world is run like middle school, with spiteful writers forming bitchy girl cliques and literary agents imposing arbitrary rules on who gets chosen and why. Yet if there’s one thing that my experiences in middle school have taught me, it’s to forget all rules of what typically “works” and to do your own thing. Though you may at times meet kind actors such as Mr. Sohcahtoa, the publishing world is overrun with mean girls, whose rules are typically to network with viragos you don’t like and to create cookie-cutter novels that adhere to MFA-ready standards. In middle school, I tried to make friends with the girls who drove me up a wall and to craft myself into the perfect “girl.” But none of it worked. What worked was to forget what people thought—and then everyone I had ever wanted and more had come running after me. Given the sorts of Manuscript Wish Lists that I have encountered, it is no surprise to me that the publishing world runs itself like a middle school, yet in borrowing the tidbits I picked up in my teenage years, I have learned to ignore standard advice, focusing instead on my own understanding of good writing to succeed.

The day will come when a literary agent will lose nights of sleep over their poor decision to reject me, lamenting the missed opportunity to discover a new successful author. In the meantime, I will be doing my own thing, waiting for that series of cookies that say “REPRESENTATION?”

I might even have the luxury to politely decline.