Isobel Connelly - Model Magic

 

So, when I was little, I loved playing with Model Magic. And if you do not know what Model Magic is, it is a quick-drying air clay. It comes in about four colors, so if you want any other ones, you have to mix them yourself. I come up with this really elaborate system. It involved making people, but the people turned to villages and then the villages needed homes. So, I started collecting all of our cardboard boxes, and cutting them up and making sure that everybody had a bed. The beds were made of tissue paper, but the mattresses were Model Magic. And I loved this. It was my world and my space and I could build, but I had just turned five at the time and I had to start going to school.

 

School is really different than home, because home had light and it was colorful, but school had crappy carpeting and bad murals on the wall. We had to do this thing called a reading circle. I did not really understand it at first, but all of these kids seemed to know, because they brought their chapter books. But I brought a picture book. As we went around in the circle, they would just read it off like it was nothing. When it got to me, I stumbled over the three words on my page, and I thought, maybe there is something off. So, I got sent to these special learning groups and these special reading groups, and they were on the weekends and they looked kind of like school but more sterile.

 

They had white walls and high-grade tables. I would sit there and I was often in these orange-- Ooh. Orange corduroy overalls. They would put blocks and letters and numbers in front of me. And eventually, words. Small ones like cot, mat, top hat, and they would say, “Isobel, can you read this?” A word has a shape, and I did not understand how the sound would correspond to that shape. When you put them together and they were meant to sound like this complete word, I would get this hot feeling in the back of my eyes and a lump in my throat, and I felt like I was about to cry, because I was this stupid girl.

 

And then, going back to school on Monday, things had really escalated. Social stigma was now attached to this. It was like, “Could you count to 100, or read a full chapter book?” I could not do either of them. And the point that it really hit me was when my teacher took me aside and said, “No one had asked to be your partner on our big field trip, so I will be with me.” I felt like the stupid girl. So, I made this conscious decision from a really young age that I would trick everybody, that I was smart and I could read and I could write and I could do math. I think for the most part, it worked. No one really knew. It took me until I was 12 to learn how to read. I did it in a few different ways.

 

When my mom would read to me, I would memorize the words that were on the page and I would remember the picture. So, when I did public reading, it looked like I knew exactly what I was saying. And in classes, I would focus on the way I said words and try to remember them too, because I realized I could remember most things, but I really could not write them. And so, I was doing this for years. When I got to high school, I was really determined to keep up this image of this girl I had created in my mind. I was on time for class, sometimes I was really early and I had homework assignments in on time and I would work so hard. But then, someone caught me, and it was my ninth-grade math teacher.

 

She asked me to stay after school, and she sat down with me and she said, “Isobel, I have taught for 13 years in all these different places, but I have never met anybody as far behind in math as you.” Again, I got that hot feeling in the back of my eyes and that lump in my throat, and I tried to swallow through it. I zoned out. I looked at the window and I kept thinking about how I was that girl again. I was that stupid girl. But then, I went every day after school, and I learned my times tables, and I learned my fractions and I eventually passed the class. I kept pushing.

 

I mean, there were moments when I knew that this was wrong, because I was scribbling out answers or questions on tests and putting in animations there instead. Sometimes I would stay up really, really late drawing, and then those drawings turned into paintings, which turned into little worlds again, and then it would be 04:00 or 05:00 and I would realize I was going to be really tired at school. But it did not really seem to matter, because at least I was really happy in those moments. 

 

Senior year came and it was time to apply to college. It would be proof if I went to some really academically rigorous school that I had never been the stupid girl. I was just smart. So, I started taking really hard classes. One was this Constitutional Law history class. We had this one big paper for the end of our term and we had to do this big reading attached to it. So, when I sat down to do this reading, I pulled it out and I went over the first line and I did not understand what it had said. So, I went back again. I took a breath and I said, “I can do this.” I went over the same line again and I still could not read it. 

 

This thing started happening where that lump in my throat was back and the hot feeling was behind my eyes. I was going over and over these lines, and I could not read any of it. I was so frustrated, because I am 18 and I know how to read now. I am not 12. I am not that girl. I am crying, and I am embarrassed and there is no one there to even see. As I am crying, the crying turns to laughing, because I hated it. I hated Constitutional Law. [audience laughter] I could not do it anymore. But the thing I realized was that there were things that I loved. What I loved was Model Magic. I mean, it was not that anymore. It was something else. But it was something I could feel. 

 

I wanted to go back to that girl who was 5 and that girl who was 12. And now, I want to go back to that 18 -year-old girl and I want to tell her, “You are not stupid. You are a really hard worker, and you are creative and you will stop at nothing. You were never the stupid girl, Isobel. You were always the smart girl. You were just chasing the wrong things.” Thank you.