same way in most situations with adults. In this essay she tells about her experience as a teenager
and young woman with low self-esteem who suffered from an eating disorder. She wishes to thank
two teachers, her 11th-grade history teacher and a graduate school professor who taught a class
on gender issues in education, for modeling ways that teachers can make a difference in the lives
of their students.—Alan Singer
In middle school and high school I was a very conscientious, quiet, shy, and insecure
young woman. I was the type of student who secretly begged for attention from teachers but
never got it. I thought teachers overlooked me and could not even remember my name. No-
body in school ever told me I was special.
In most classes I would not raise my hand. I feared I would give a wrong answer and be
called stupid. One experience I had that was different was in my 11th-grade history class.
That teacher was the only one to encourage me to speak up and he helped me develop a
sense of self-worth. He is one of the reasons I decided to become a social studies teacher.
As a teenager, I always had friends, but I was never confident in myself. I felt like an out-
sider. We lived in an ethnically homogeneous community, but this did not make me feel com-
fortable. Most of the students came from families that had more money than we had. Their
parents were doctors, lawyers, and accountants; mine were teachers. We were a middle-
class family living in an affluent community, and I felt we did not belong.
My eating problems began in junior high school. I was not really heavy, but I thought I
was obese and I felt ugly. I also felt miserable about my hair because it was curly, black, and
frizzy, whereas everyone else seemed to have blonde or brown straight hair. In high school,
when I came home from school feeling down I would open the refrigerator and start eating.
Food comforted me in a way that nothing else could.
I went to the state university and it was like being in high school all over again. I was with
many of the same people I knew from before and I had the same feelings of inadequacy. In
my sophomore year in college I started working out heavily to lose weight and I developed
an obsession about food. Everything else in life—family, friends, school, my facial features—
were beyond my control. But I could curb the amount I ate and reduce my weight and it gave
me a sense of power that I never experienced before.
I started exercising more and eating less and less. I wanted no fat in my diet whatsoever.
If I ate an extra carrot I would feel guilty and run longer on the treadmill the next day. I was
obsessed to the point that food and exercise were all I thought about. Everyday, I wrote in
my diary what I would eat the next day, how much I was going to run, and how much time I
would spend on the treadmill.
At the same time, on the weekends when I would go out with my friends to bars, I was get-
ting positive attention from men that I never received before. They commented on how great
I looked and how thin I was. Getting this attention fed into my illness. I loved it and was en-
couraged to eat less and workout even more. I understood the correlation; lose weight and
get the attention I craved. I thought, if only I had been thinner in high school, I would not
have been ignored.
For more than a year, I did not menstruate. My hair was falling out, my skin was pale, I
was always chilled, and I was not sleeping very much. But when you are anorexic nothing
else matters. You become totally self-absorbed with being thin. In the morning, the first thing
I did was check my rib cage and shoulders to make sure I could feel the bones.
During one spring break I went away with friends. We were staying together and they
could see all of my eating and exercise “rituals.” All I would eat for breakfast was an apple,
and if I could not find one, I did not eat. One day I passed out. When we came home, they
spoke with my parents. My mother started to cry when she saw me, but I refused to believe
anything was wrong. I resisted for weeks. Finally, my parents got me admitted to a hospital
with a program for people with eating disorders.
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