He is at the top of his Columbus class, but challenges make him feel like he’s not enough

One of my friends in the District tearfully told me about a young man she had to counsel the day after the recent Page One awards. He came to her early the next morning visibly disheartened. No prompting necessary, the young man opened up about the awards event.

“They were skyscrapers, and I was a shack.” A simple analogy of the young man’s feelings after attending the ceremony. It’s the same feelings he had when he returned to school from the Exchange Club’s monthly Student-of-the-Month awards luncheon, he told her. Both events honor outstanding students from Muscogee County, but offer top prizes to those students who stand out above the rest in the competition.

This particular young man, I am told, is the salutatorian and editor of the yearbook at his school, but had to borrow a suit from a teacher and shoes from ROTC to be properly dressed for both occasions. He excels in his advanced classes, but doesn’t have proactive parents who will take him to get his driver’s license or fill out financial aid forms for college. He is at the top of his class, an outstanding leader, and a role model of citizenship at his school, but he has to walk home from school even in the rain.

And he felt like a shack standing among towering skyscrapers on a stage of shame. She said that regardless of what he has accomplished at his school, he felt like he had achieved nothing that night.

When he walks the halls of school, she said, he walks with confidence, knowing he has made a difference, knowing he has accomplished a great deal and offered much to his classmates and the school. He has reached the ceiling of accolades and opportunity. He feels proud and successful.

But take him outside the walls of his school and compare him to students across town, and he feels out of place, inferior and small.

Her heart was broken for him, and she reached out to me for some advice. But what do you say to a kid who has done everything right? Excelled in every opportunity offered him but still feels like it’s not enough? I don’t know. The only thing I can really do is tell his story.

In some schools, the sky is the limit as far as opportunity is concerned: cure cancer, create bionic artificial limbs, study abroad, make a perfect score on the SAT, be pushed to a limitless potential. But in other schools, opportunities are maxed out and students eventually reach a ceiling in their successes.

Some students grab ahold of everything a school has to offer, but what the school has to offer pales in comparison to what is offered just down the street, leaving capable, young minds stifled with a lack of opportunity. I get it. I see it every day. I feel my friend’s pain. So, what’s the answer?

Of course, I have my own opinion, as we all do. But it takes an entire community to acknowledge the issue and then to decide on a solution.

I do know one thing for sure, though. Offer a group of kids a beat-up Mustang and a chance to paint it up nice and get it running again, and they’ll rise, overcome and excel. I’ve seen that happen with my own eyes.

This story was originally published May 9, 2017 at 6:22 PM with the headline "He is at the top of his Columbus class, but challenges make him feel like he’s not enough."