Merit

I got into grad school with a "merit scholarship" for high grades. I graduated from McGill with a 3.6 GPA, helped by eight straight classes of 4.0s at the end of my degree. "I achieved that since I decided to go to grad school", I lie to myself, because it's convenient to create a narrative out of otherwise meaningless numbers or a skillset of chosing politically conscious professors. Even better, I dichotomize into "pre" responsible and "now" responsible, and this "now" responsible version of me is employable, dedicated, and conquered whatever internal habits were keeping them from reaching their "full potential".

The years of university, like the years pre-university, have been turbulent. It's a turbulence that lends itself to mental health diagnoses and its accompanying metaphors of battle. I feel proud to say "despite the illness, I got into grad school". It's a victory over an institution built to filter out people like me from admission, and I like that. Hopefully it inspires, the way other "rags to riches" stories keeps us forging forward on our tedious path. But I don't want to talk about details, although they may be relatable. The relatableness is the curse. Sharing my story and the forlorn statistics of my diagnoses will inevitably make someone feel bad that they weren't unwell enough and didn't achieve enough. And I don't want to gatekeep victory to my certain level of illness and success.

Ranking of struggles is fully institutionalized in the form of accomodation. To get in the door you visit the industry known to be full of assholes, and you hope the person you're interviewed by doesn't believe in female hysteria or never-ending weight loss as a cure to all ills. You pray that if he (and it's almost always a he) doesn't take the approach "I had to suck up my problems and suffer, why shouldn't you?". But let's say that the psychiatrist you see isn't an asshole, or is an asshole in a good mood. You fill out the questionnaire you can find online, probably silently. Then you get the magic paper of Validated Illness. And you're different than the people who are purportedly having an easier time (or having a too difficult time to get through the door at all). Why should I want this? I don't want 1.5x as much as other students. I want an appropriate amount of time for me. I don't want an additional day. I want the time I need.

I want the scope of sympathy to be so broad it undoes our very notion of fairness. I feel sympathy towards people who confess to "laziness" in their first year. "I was stupid and privileged, it was my first time away from home, but now I've developped good study skills". Adapting to living alone, even exempt from trauma or sickness or disability, sounds hard! Why should you be barred from the accomodations I recieve, just because you've experienced pain less frequently or less intensely? Why should it take a whole year for you, and everyone arond you, to learn "study skills"?

During my undergrad I had a handful of very good teachers. It feels like I learned how to read. I fell in love with writing and stretching the limits of how we see the world. It's a delight that begs to be shared. I want everyone to get a chance to experience it - and then another chance, later on, to return, and to keep returning as many times as they want or need. How idealistic, you might think! But that's kind of the point. I need to learn what direction I want the world to move in. That's called developing a politics. Even being admitted to grad school is bittersweet. I'm an occupied seat in a small quota. I'm a rejection for someone else. I'm a small cohort picked and pruned by circumstance.

I got a scholarship to my graduate program probably because I got into McGill. I got into McGill probably because it uses the same notorious 'high school ranking' system as Waterloo University but less publicly. And I went to that high-ranking highschool because of where I lived.

If this scholarship came with a moment for acknowledgments, I would need to thank the city of Ottawa for doing socio-economic segregation so that some schools are distinguished over others, and I should thank my highschool for being so hostile to poor children that they leave before taking the standardized tests that form these rankings. I should thank the nonbinary kid in middle school having such a rough go that I compartmentalized that crisis until conveniently after highschool. I should thank my drama teacher having a soft spot for British accents, thank my racist French teacher giving benefit of the doubt to her white students over others, thank the notorious pedophile teacher for not targetting me and targetting some other kids instead.

So I'll take the scholarship money - I guess I'm not THAT principled - but I don't buy into the idea of a "merit" scholarship at all. I don't want a congratulations, I don't want to be the goal or success story. I want funded post-secondary education, the disintegration of fabricated scarcity in the forms of "prestige", and while we're at it, the abolition of grades and tests at all.