Since I was little, I was always seen as the relative of someone else.  As I came to kindergarten, my teachers there were the same ones that taught my brothers a few years before. They’d always tell me stories of how my brothers had been or what they did, and sometimes they’d even compare us to each other. In elementary school, there was a big giraffe made from paper hanging at a window down an aisle. One of my brothers had created this giraffe in his art class. Hanging there, so big that is was nearly impossible to overlook, it reminded me of the presence of my brothers in the teachers’ mind all the time. Just like this giraffe threw a shadow on me whenever I walked past it, my brothers, parents or even uncles would overshadow my personality with other people’s expectations or memories of them a lot more times in my life.

In an after-school activity, I had been assigned the group of my brothers’ former homeroom teacher, who would always tell me what polite kids my brothers were. Back then, it wasn’t even bothering me to hear people talk about my relatives all the time. Mostly, I was proud of belonging to their family and being able to add to the great impressions they had left. But sometimes, having people know my relatives was a disadvantage. The principal, my music teacher, would give me bad grades, even though I participated very well and contributed useful information to his classes. He reasoned my grading with some lame excuses, like that I wouldn’t move enough to the music, even though in class he was always saying that it was completely okay to not move to the music at all. I knew that the true reason for why he was giving me bad grades was that he had made a bad history with my uncle, back when they were in school together. He wouldn’t admit it, but my uncle was also the reason for why my younger brother was the only kid in his class not getting accepted into any afternoon activities in school. For me, the grading wasn’t even the worst thing about it. The thing that bothered me was that I couldn’t do anything for the principal’s history with my uncle. I couldn’t make history unhappen or let it vanish out of his memory.

When I moved on to middle school, most of my teachers there knew my brothers and were comparing my grades to their excellent ones. There were things I was better at than my brothers and things that I was worse at. But the only things that seemed to matter were the things I was worse at than they. My music teacher, who was an elderly man, had even taught my dad and my uncle earlier. In class, he would sometimes tell the students what great musicality my father has had. Some kids thought that was very weird and would grin at me then. Others would admire me for the stories. I wasn’t contented with either one of those opinions. I couldn’t take any credit for my dad’s musicality. Why would people admire me or grin in my direction because of such superficial things? I didn’t understand it. When I look at those incidents now, I still don’t get it, but also I stopped caring.

Over time things have changed. Right now, I am going to a school, where my dad is the principal and my mother will soon start teaching there too. The last year, my first one at the school, has been kind of strange. I sometimes felt like teachers would try to get me onto their side just to make my dad like them better. Students, who barely knew me, referred to me as the daughter of the principal. Once, a few boys called on me in the library during break and asked whether my dad had already finished correcting their math exam and when he would return it. Honestly, I didn’t have a clue, but these kids just assumed I did. When students from my class wanted an exam to be replaced by a complex assignment, they would ask me to arrange that, instead of a teacher.

At some point, teachers would treat me different from how they treated other kids. When I forgot my permission slip for a field trip at home, they would print it out again and walk to the office, in order to have my dad sign it while other kids just couldn’t go if they forgot theirs at home. Don’t get me wrong. I was very grateful they did that for me and maybe I was just being lucky, but sometimes I felt bad for having this extra opportunity. I had teachers speak to my dad about how happy I seemed walking over the court, which always made me feel uncomfortable when I walked past them the next time because I felt observed. If I didn’t have a perfect score on an exam once, the teacher would come up to my dad and tell him that he thought I still understood everything and he didn’t need to worry, even though it wasn’t a bad grade at all. Just not a perfect one. I believe if any other kid would have got that grade the teacher wouldn’t even take into consideration to contact their parents because of it. Sometimes, it feels as if I would be under a microscope all the time.

When a teacher confused my name in class, he would apologies multiple times afterward and reassure me that he knew my actual name. By that time, I had nearly forgotten about the incident. Another teacher was rushing into class a few minutes late. Usually, she was perfectly on time and she is always super nice, makes a good job, is a great person to her students and puts a lot of effort into her classes. As this dedicated teacher walked in, she apologized for being late and told us that she was having one of her “late-days”. This made me smile and I was really glad to see her. But then she suddenly turned towards me and quickly added: “Don’t tell your dad.” I didn’t know if she was joking or not. I just smiled. But this time, the smile I wore was fake. I was covering up how disappointed I was. Not in her, I still love her so much, but in the person, who I had become. I was panicking people. That little remark about her “late-days” had come from her heart. She had just been herself, how she would normally act, and didn’t think it through completely before she said it out aloud. When she realized that I, the daughter of the principal, was in the room, she regretted this remark, which was just a piece of her fun and spontaneous side. At that moment, I felt like I was just the daughter of my dad and not myself: a student, who absolutely loves that woman, as a person, a role model, and as my teacher, and laughed at her funny comment. Those situations made me realize that I wasn’t just a student anymore. People seemed to think that if they said something wrong or made a mistake in front of me, my dad would know about it right away. But for real, that was the last thing I would ever think of. I hate shedding a bad light on others, so I only tell my dad good stuff about teachers. Also, I am not some kind of a secret spy for him. Actually, I like having memories with my teachers nobody outside the classroom gets to know about. I wouldn’t tell anybody at home about happenings from class unless it was an absolute necessity. Still, I had turned into a person teachers seemed afraid of. For students, I had turned into someone powerful, who had to know everything about what was going on at school, at conferences, staff parties, etc.

Oftentimes, this constant observation, the high expectations that I am not able to meet and people’s fears when they see me, just make me feel uncomfortable. Usually, I wish, I could be just an ordinary student. One, whose parents work somewhere outside of school. Someone, who blended in, instead of sticking out. A student, who wasn’t assumed to represent the beliefs of her father, the principal. One, who didn’t need to carry this huge responsibility with her all the time. I want to go back to being asked “What’s your name?” when people first meet me, instead of “Aren’t you the daughter of the principal?”.

Even though some people were treating me different from others, I met one teacher, who didn’t. Surprisingly, this teacher is the one, who asked me to not tell my dad about her “late-days”. But as I said, I still admire her, and I feel like she would not assume that I tell my dad anything bad about her anymore. When we talk, she is just focusing on me. Not on my parents or anybody else. One time when I was talking to her in the hallways, my dad passed by. I greeted him and she did as well. In my head, I was going like: “Okay, that’s the end of our conversation. She will turn around and start conversating with him, just like any other teacher would.” I wouldn’t have been mad at her for doing this. My dad was the principal while I was just a student. But despite all my assumptions, she just smiled at my dad and continued talking to me as if nothing happened while he resumed walking. I tried to focus on the conversation, but inside of me I felt so grateful and happy, I could have danced right there and really wanted to hug her. I trusted her, and she made me feel like I could tell her about anything.

Throughout the last year, this amazing woman turned into my rock to lean on. She became my favorite person. Not only because she is so amazing herself, but because I can be myself with her. She took me the way I am, and it is lovely to chat with her. But right now, I feel like I am on the verge of losing this unique relationship. The reason thereof is that my mom is about to start teaching at the school too. While my father always had some kind of a formal relationship with all the teachers, my mom will be among all the other teachers, probably developing friendships soon. Even if my dad spent a lot of time with all the teachers at conferences before, I guess I had a closer relationship with my favorite teacher than he did. Probably, this is the reason why she saw me as the person I truly was. I am just scared that if she becomes friends with my mom now, because they even work in the same department, she will start to only see me as the daughter of my mother. I wish that this won’t happen because I wouldn’t have the strength to bear it. Just imagining the only person at school and my favorite person overall seeing me as someone I am not, just like so many others, is horrible. Certainly, I want my mom to be well and to be friends with her colleagues, but I just hope this won’t hurt the relationship with my favorite teacher. She was the one making all the consequences of being the principal’s daughter more bearable and I always knew that even if everybody else didn’t know who I really was, she did. In addition to that, she would never be afraid of talking to me openly nor acted weirdly when I was around. My vocabulary isn’t even providing enough words to express how I feel, and how grateful I am to have her in my life. I don’t want to lose her. 

Overall, it does have some benefits to be the daughter of the principal, but usually, I just want to be ordinary, like everybody else is. Don’t misunderstand this. I don’t believe it is necessary to fit in, and I know that we’re not all the same. The point of it is not that I don’t want to stand out at all. But I only like standing out because of things I do or say, not things that my relatives do or who they are. I am not unique because of my dad’s job and won’t take credit for anything he does. Indeed, I am the daughter of my parents, and I do love them. They are the ones, who influence and raise me, so I probably am a little similar to them or have taken on some of their beliefs. But being the daughter of my parents is not the only thing that defines me. Over time, I have collected my own memories, made experiences by myself, learned my own lessons, met different people, was touched by other things, and was going down a different path than they did. Even though they influence me a lot, they are not the only people shaping me. I look at this world through my own eyes now and can form opinions from what I see. It would probably be easier for my parents to live in a house with me if I would be some kind of copy of them, which is not the case. We fight sometimes, just as any other children and their parents do.

The wish I and probably a lot of other teens, whose parents teach at their school, have is that we won’t be forced into roles we do not want to play anymore. Please don’t label us. Don’t reduce us to a single fact. Try not to simplify something complex. I hope all the children, who are having parents teaching at their school, will be seen with all of their facets, their colors, and their habits in the future. Just keep in mind that we are more than only our last name.