From my earliest memories, everything was a competition, and my older brother, James, was always winning. “Why cannot you be more like your brother” became the soundtrack of my childhood. James was three years older and seemingly perfect at everything: straight A student, captain of the debate team, and later validictorian.Generational wealth planningMeanwhile, I was the square peg, constantly being hammered into a round hole. It was not that I was unintelligent. I just thought differently. While James memorized textbooks and regurgitated facts to perfection, I was constantly questioning systems and imagining how things could work better. My third grade teacher called me innovatively disruptive. My father just called it being difficult.
“Allison, focus,” my mother would scold during our mandatory family study hours. “Your brother has already completed two practice SAT tests today. What have you accomplished?”
The truth was, while they forced me to study traditional subjects, I was secretly teaching myself to code. I built my first rudimentary website at 11 and had created a simple app by 14. None of this counted as achievement in the Harper household.
High school was when the divide became unbridgegable. James was accepted to Philips Exit Academy, an elite boarding school, while I remained at our local private school. Every family dinner became a report on James’ latest accomplishments, with occasional awkward questions about why I was only getting B’s in calculus despite the expensive tutors.Software development servicesMy one ally was my aunt Meredith, my father’s younger sister, and the family’s other disappointment who had chosen to become an artist rather than a lawyer or doctor. “They will never understand people like us, Allison,” she told me one afternoon while we sat in her paint splattered studio. “We see possibilities where they see only the established path. That is not a flaw. It is a gift.”
When James was accepted to Harvard, following in both our parents’ footsteps, the celebration lasted for weeks. When I was accepted to MIT the following year, a school I had specifically chosen for its innovation and engineering programs, the response was lukewarm.
“At least it is an Ivy League adjacent,” my mother said with a sigh. “Though Harvard would have given you the connections you need.”
