17
PGEP
Issue I: Resistance
ACADEMIC RESISTANCE: a perspective from a former gifted kid By: Ariel Burgess
POSITIONALITY: I’m a third year Politcal Studies major and Philosophy minor who is heavily involved in the Queen’s community, especially via the Queens University Liberal Association. I’m a white, cisgender, bisexual and disabled woman. I’m incredibly passionate about human rights, justice, international relations, and the study of morals and ethics. It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to contribute a personal piece to a journal like PGEP.
I
’ve been feeling the seismic shift in the world since the start of the pandemic – the external shift, the global shift, and my internal shift. It feels like those eerie moments after you hear a thud in the dark, when there’s no sound except your own breathing. I’ve been sitting in the dark, waiting for the next thud, since 2020. One thud sounded the night I watched my first patient in the nursing home I worked at die in front of me. The next thud landed when I was assaulted. The final one landed last month, when I was diagnosed with Autism. All along, someone in the
background has been urging me to ignore the thuds and go back to sleep – or in this case, school. I’ve recently decided that going back to sleep and ignoring the sounds in the dark is no longer something I can do. Long before the thuds began, and my decline into a steep academic drop started, I thought I knew myself, and that I knew how to learn. In high school, I was captain of the cheer team, with a 97% average (or some other number that screams “overachiever”). I played lead flute in the band. I never had to study, and I always aced my exams. I had very few friends, and my hobbies were strange to say the least (I still go to the rug-hooking class I took back then), but I never questioned it. As it turns out, my classmates had completely left me in the dust. I realized this, rather harshly, during my first
