People are people.

I am a busy person, I love to live life and enjoy it, I’m involved, I have friends and could be referred to as a social person at times. I get good grades, my teachers love me, I’m known by almost everyone at my school and only a few people don’t like me. Now for a confession, I am a foster child.

And what is the stereotype for a foster child? What is the way society views them? As runaways, drop outs, druggies; and I know this well because every time that people around me, either teachers, administrators, friends and their parents find out I get the same expression. It’s shocked, and pitying followed by a comment along the lines of “but you’re so together.” or “but you’re such a good kid.” Here’s some news for everyone, stereotypes do not apply. Basic generalizations about people any group of people invariably end up being wrong, and there are negative side affects, I’ve seen them first hand.

Teenagers and kids are impressionable, we’ve all heard that a million times right? So why do people not pause to think about the fact that hearing things like that? Hearing what is expected, or rather not, does affect how this kids act. I have honestly lost track of how many people I have had tell me in my life that I would not succeed, I would end up being a nothing, a nobody, in jail. But I have this stubborn streak where once I decided, once I knew who I was, I made up my mind that it was a lie, that was not who I am. Being a foster child, being an abuse victim does not define who I am as a person now, nor will it in the future. Or rather it does but not in the way people assume. I took the hard parts of my life and it fired me, refined me like tempered steel into who I am. I am very sure of whom I am and no one is ever going to take that away from me. I’ve fought too hard for it.

At a foster home I lived in last year, with the Porter couple and five other teenage girls I saw how this stereotype affected young girls and had my own resolve not to lower my standards to what others expected tested. The ‘mother’ figure of the house was very sure that all the girls heard constant stories about how other girls, her old charges, had turned out. The stories ranged from being in a mental intuition, to jail, and a number of other horrible ends. Apparently there was no happy ending for a foster girl. Even the social workers we came in contact with didn’t think very much of us. A number of the girls ran away, got involved in drugs, several were taken to juvenile detention, others to group homes. No one stayed for long, other then me. I lived in that home for 19 months, I earned high grades, I was an editor for my school newspaper, I was never in trouble, never ditched, never acted up. And the foster mother hated me for it, she said that I was a snob, that I thought I was too good for my circumstances. She degraded me mentally and verbally, made me an outcast within the house; it was the only way she could reduce me to a level of desolation equal to what the other girls were in.

I moved out of there, I raised my grades even higher, I earned Editor in Chief on my school paper, co-founded Model UN on my campus. I became even better at what she had hated me for. This last summer I took another step toward breaking the stereotype I applied and won both a scholarship and a position to attend the Academy of Art University’s Pre-College Summer Art Experience. I got a court order to live in San Francisco in the dorms by myself for six weeks; I was able to have a taste of what college would be. This is something that no one else, no other foster child from the North State has ever been able to do before. Now all my works treat me like their poster child, they expect everything out of me, I am their star now and I can’t help but be a little resentful. I challenged the stereotype and broke it for myself but why does that mean that I have to be so much better then everyone around me? I have my faults and weaknesses too….there is no middle road in this it appears.

Even though its been a struggle I don’t regret a moment of it, I now can get into any college I choose, I have so many doors open to me. But I look back and remember how many of the girls believed what they were told; who followed what society decided they should be. Think of how many great minds and huge hearts must have vanished thanks to it, it’s a silent affliction and no one talks about it because the people who are ‘helping’ these troubled kids are actually filling their minds with the fact that they will fail.

People are people……nothing changes that.

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