‘The Feeling of Inadequacy Doesn’t Just Disappear’: How Schooling Has Affected My Self-Esteem as a Neurodiverse Person

By Emma Smith

Last month, I was sitting in my back garden with a glass of wine and my school friend, Alice, reminiscing about our school experience. It was an almost comical contrast. Alice embodied academic excellence. She succeeded in everything she put her mind to, from physics to English literature to sports (yes, even team sports). She quelled my jealousy with her rock-bottom taste in television and film. If we had anything, we had Glee.

I was on the other end of the spectrum. I struggled and slogged through each exam, praying to scrape through, relieved to ‘pass’ and not caring much to hear the grade. Even with support sessions every week and 25% extra time for exams, I couldn’t come close to my peers. It was a private all-girls school, built to study Latin, maths, history and science, with endless tests and homework. Most sailed through seemingly unscathed by the academic rigour.

I, however, was extremely scathed.

I was dyslexic and struggling with writing, reading, patterns and mathematics. My hand-eye coordination meant I was shit at sports too. I was at the bottom of the bottom sets, and I hated myself. I resented being surrounded by classmates who would shed tears over an A instead of an A*. I resented when I was told that taking GCSE Drama might not be feasible due to low uptake and staffing costs. I resented being given the ‘Most Improved’ award at Prize Giving while others were awarded for genuine achievements. That award became a running joke in our family. Luckily, I had a sense of humour.

‘Well, it was unfair how people were treated’, Alice admitted as I swirled my wine glass, tempted to down the lot. ‘They took no interest in anyone who wasn’t going to University.’ She pointed out that one of our classmates chose not to apply to university and got zero support: no career advice or even basic CV guidance.

Regardless of the cheques signed, the teachers had already graded us in their minds. Destined for Oxbridge? Worth the extra effort. A red brick Uni? Eh, not too bad. An apprenticeship? They’re a lost cause. It was all about the stats. How many students could they say got into Oxbridge? How many into university? How many smiling girls, waving their acceptance letters, could they stick on their shiny pamphlets? Among the 38 girls in our year, my brilliant friend was one of the four who secured a spot at Oxbridge.

I know what you’re thinking. ‘Oh, boo hoo, you felt bad about not feeling smart in your fancy private school, paid for by parents.’ And you’d be right.

I get angry when I think that my education, which was the incredibly privileged best-case scenario, let me down. How much worse can it be for others not in the same financial position or those who remain undiagnosed?

I was diagnosed as dyslexic at eight after being pulled out of a comprehensive primary, where I fell drastically behind. In a panic, my parents placed me in a private prep school, citing the smaller class sizes and extra support. Neither of my parents had gone to university at this point, and while they recognised school was necessary, I never got the sense I ‘had’ to succeed in school or go to university. ‘Just do your best’ was the motto repeated to me.

But my parents hadn’t realised that the private school was a double-edged sword because regardless of the extra support, I was now in a system built solely to churn out academic achievements. 

At ten years old, I faced SAT exams and got my first taste of failure, which set the tone for my schooling. Next, I took the 11+ exams to get into private secondary school. I sat three exams in quiet classrooms in unfamiliar schools. It smelt like disinfectant and school dinners, and I could feel my heart racing and my palms sweat. I would be accepted into one school, while most had their pick of several. Another 11-year-old described my school as the one that ‘everyone got into anyway’. A dyslexic friend was not accepted into any schools. I remember the tears streaming down her face to this day – just aged 11.

What did this teach us? It taught us that academic achievement was all that mattered. And it didn’t matter how much my parents insisted that I should ‘just do my best’. These achievements could be used to barter favour, boast and compete, and I didn’t have any. I’d turned up to a sword fight with a French baguette.

I threw myself into theatre and music. I was more confident than most kids, and I could talk to literally anyone. But instead of engaging those skills, I was pushed down into chairs in echoey school halls, told to shut up and prove myself with an HB pencil. I masked my disability as much as possible, hiding it behind a loud personality and laughter. Hours and hours of extra tutoring at the kitchen table left me frustrated and feeling inadequate. My dad still comments that my shoulders were always up by my ears as a kid because of the stress. He took me to a chiropractor at 12 because I suffered from neck pain.

Now, I realise that stress doesn’t go anywhere. That feeling of inadequacy doesn’t just disappear. It’s still in me when I’m asked to count spare change or to read out loud in front of colleagues. It strikes when I collate financial summaries, and I stare at the numbers dance around the worksheet, mocking me, convincing me it’s all wrong. It rears its head when I’m asked to justify my approach, and I clam up, going defensive.

My instant reaction is that I’m wrong, I’m dumb, I’m slow. I’m back at the kitchen table with my dad, who is equally frustrated that I don’t understand fractions. I’m standing in the school car park with an envelope, dread in the pit of my stomach as my peers open theirs, hugging their parents, joy and relief on their faces.

The words constantly repeat: I’m wrong, I’m dumb, I’m slow.

It doesn’t matter how much you run to catch up if you’re still panting when you get there. The sheer effort to keep up will kill you.

Before quitting my job in theatre, I looked at the senior managers and tried to imagine myself in their shoes. I tried to see myself managing human beings and their work while still organising my own. I tried to imagine navigating through challenging financial forecasts. I tried to picture myself being confident enough to sit in a senior meeting without my heart racing or my palms sweating.

And do all that without those words trickling in my head: I’m wrong, I’m dumb, I’m slow.

And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it because I was still the little girl who hated her brain, who was underestimated and told she was slow. She remembers being at the bottom of the class, with no one else coming close. She was lost in a school not built for her, where her strengths, albeit limited, were left untapped.

I still compare myself to those colleagues and their strengths and achievements. I fall short, always. The sentiment that I’m less, that I’m worthless, has seeped so deeply into my bones, my skin, and my psyche. I know I’ll fail and fall again and again, but eventually, I hope I might wash it out.