As a little girl, I was quick. Curious. I picked up on things fast, even the things people didn’t say out loud. But instead of being met with freedom or encouragement, I was met with rules. Delays. Busywork.

Two-week projects that could’ve taken two days. Cold fluorescent lights overhead. Sitting still for over eight hours a day, five days a week, just to get a 30-minute “recess,” which honestly felt more like a monitored jail yard time than actual freedom. It started feeling less like learning… and more like training. And not for life, for labor.

That’s not education.

I Couldn’t Stay Present...

I didn’t have the words back then, but I felt it in my body. Something wasn’t right.

I was piecing it all together in real time, and the thought that kept repeating in my head was:
There’s no way I can do this for the next 5, 10, even 15 years plus with extended schooling. I genuinely hated going with a passion.

And yet… I had no idea it was only the beginning.

Being present in school was hard. I’d zone out constantly. Daydream through lessons. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do the work — I made good grades. But mostly to stay in my parents’ good graces, not because I felt connected to what I was learning.

I did enjoy history. And surprisingly, math. And to be fair, I had some amazing teachers along the way. But the older I got, the more school became a place I dreaded being in. It felt like I was wasting time, or worse, like I was being shaped into something I never agreed to become... Looking back, I also realize I was growing up during a major shift. The world was changing, especially our awareness of the systems we were raised in. And the education system? It’s never been neutral. Not then, and especially not now.

My mom always told me:

“It’s not really about school. It’s about being educated.”

And I carry that with me. Because in this world, especially as a Black woman, people don’t always recognize your brilliance unless someone else — someone with power — validates it for you.

You’re only “extraordinary” when someone else decides you are. And when the system was built on the belief that Black people weren’t even fully human, that validation becomes rare. Conditional. Sometimes, impossible.

So no, the game was never fair. And my mom knew that. She taught me that to be educated, truly educated, is powerful. That an informed Black woman is seen as a threat, and unfortunately, that’s still the world we live in.

There’s one day I’ll never forget: an art assignment. We were asked to create something inspired by Picasso. I was excited. I took my time, poured myself into it. I painted, sketched — even got paint in my hair. For once, I felt like I expressed something real. The next day, my teacher barely glanced at it, scribbled all over it in a thick, black sharpie, and gave me a 3 out of 10. A four. On a creative project.

three. Out of ten. On a creative project...??

That’s when it hit me: it was never really about my creativity or expression. It was about control. It was about staying behind a line that frankly, nobody ever knows exists until they cross it. Then, turning around and being told to be “grateful” for any small praise I received. That moment didn’t just sting, it opened my eyes.

That day, I asked my mom if I could be homeschooled. And to her credit, she listened.

I finished high school a little under a year before my peers. For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

But that art class moment? That was the beginning of my unlearning. It was the first time I saw how deeply the system was designed to mold us — not into ourselves, but into something more manageable.

The Deeper Truth: This System isn't broken

It’s working exactly as it was intended to.

Public education in America wasn’t created to nurture thinkers — it was built to produce workers. The structure mimics the factory floor: bells like whistles, desks in rows, performance reviews called grades.

• Sit for long hours without question
• Follow rules without understanding them
• Be evaluated and ranked constantly
• Ignore our well-being in the name of productivity
• Stay too drained to imagine a different life

This isn’t broken.
This is by design.

The conditioning hits even harder.

Because now, it’s not just about preparing you for labor — it’s about preparing you to survive under constant surveillance. You learn to minimize your voice. Adjust your tone. Don’t be too much. Don’t be too quiet. Don’t be too smart, too emotional, too creative. Just… blend in.

By the time we reach adulthood, many of us don’t even know who we are anymore. We just know how to perform.

I struggle because I see it for what it is: modern-day slavery dressed in professionalism. Because I know I was prepared for this exact exhaustion by a system that never asked who I wanted to be, just how well I could follow instructions.

I struggle because I recognize it.

Work, the way it’s structured, feels eerily familiar. Like school, just with more bills and less imagination. I was trained for this exact kind of burnout. I was taught to tolerate it, but that doesn’t mean I want to keep living in it. And the hardest part? Most people don’t even know they’re stuck. They call it “being an adult.” They call it “the grind.” They call it “just life.” But I call it what it is: indoctrination.

And I want something else.

Some of us woke up too early — and never went back to sleep.

This space is for the ones who saw it too. Who sat in classrooms and offices and thought, “When do I get to be myself?”

This is for the quiet rebels. The overthinkers. The dreamers who never quite fit.
For the ones who sensed something was off, even if they didn’t know how to say it out loud.

IBG isn’t just a blog. It’s a remembering. A resistance. A soft place to land.

We’re building something new.
And we’re just getting started.