Numbers in Red

By Christina Topper

Artist Statement:

I created this piece during my senior year of High School. After finally being diagnosed with a Learning Disability that year, I was able to start making sense of myself, my brain, and why certain things were always so difficult for me. Most of my K-12 academic career was marked by contradicting feedback from teachers, report cards with mostly Cs, and endless hours of hard work. I knew from an early age that it took me longer to do things like reading and writing. My peers would speed through chapters of their books during independent reading time and I would be lucky to finish a few pages. My teachers would tell me I was lazy and that if I simply put more effort into their class my grades would improve. But that was never how it worked for me. There were always a few teachers who took the time to see that my effort wasn't matching my grades. And those teachers would encourage me and tell me that they knew I worked hard and they knew I was smarter than my grades made me seem. But I was never able to escape the fact that I was defined by my grades.

Those numbers, so often written in red ink inside an angry circle, told me what kind of person I was. They controlled my image of myself, my worth, and my place in the world. They told me what I could and couldn't do. Even if I dug up enough courage to think I might be able to escape the hold the numbers had on me, they would be thrown back in my face as irrefutable proof that I was not enough. Not a good enough writer to take AP Art History, not a quick enough reader to be in the regular Social Studies class, not smart enough to go to college. This is the narrative I internalized.

Creating this piece, which started with crumpled-up quizzes at the bottom of my backpack, was the first step in creating my own narrative for my life. Collecting examples of my “bad grades” and taking a red sharpie to the numbers was the first time I realized how much I was holding on (physically and mentally) to this idea that these numbers are a mark of my self-worth. This piece includes grades from almost every subject across all 4 years of my high school experience. When it was completed, my art teacher asked me if we could display it in the hallway, right outside the teacher's lounge. It was the most vulnerable thing I had ever done. To show the whole school my grades. But it allowed me to take control of my new narrative. The narrative that I am smart and love learning for the sake of learning. My academic interests and talents are varied and deep. My mind is valuable and my disabilities do not diminish that value in any way. I continued to build my new narrative over the next several years, through the end of High School, College, and even Graduate School at an Ivy League school. And I continue to share this experience with other young neurodivergent people who are looking for a way to create their own narrative. One that is true to their lived experiences and celebrates their ability to define and create themselves outside of the confines of the neurotypical systems we live in.