Whenever my English teacher embarks upon a new unit, she will organise a class discussion based upon the unit’s themes. This “discussion” consists of a piece of paper with statements listed, each of the statements having the four choices of agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree, and disagree for me to circle. After the class has put their opinion on paper, my teacher will read each statement aloud, and depending on what each person has circled, they will move to a certain corner of the room. I do not circle any of the four choices, and I am always the last to move. Instead, I watch.
I wait until all my peers have chosen their corners, then move to the one least occupied. While I do occasionally exercise some personal opinion, if I cannot decide between two choices, the less popular choice will almost always prevail. Almost immediately I am given furtive glances, confused stares. My teacher will prompt one person in each corner to explain why they have selected their respective corner, eyeing me while she does so. It is not the attention that I enjoy; I have found that the novelty of my decisions wore off around our third unit. Nor do I delight in causing confusion, and the excitement of getting to play devil’s advocate is only part of the game. Rather, I do it for the control.
When I purposefully put myself in the position of an outsider, a dissenter, I am able to influence the way I am perceived, regardless of whether my image is a negative or positive one. While I do not know the exact effect my divergence has on others (are they impressed with my convoluted theories and explanations? Or annoyed with my method of wasting class time?) at least I know that I am not invisible; I am a person to take seriously. It is a tiring act, and after a few rounds of the game I will retire my charades and surrender to popular opinion. Nevertheless, I have satisfied my intent—in making a surprising choice, I am guaranteeing that I will not be stereotyped, nor assigned a permanent role in the movie that many of my peers believe themselves to be starring in.
In a way, I am choosing to become an outsider in a select situation where I have the power so as not to be stuck as an outsider in the minds of others, a place that my influence cannot easily reach. Some may think that I am brave to voice my true opinions even when they deviate from the general consensus. Yet in fact, I do so because I am secretly a coward, so afraid of becoming an outsider for good that I result to unorthodox means. Though what I do may be odd, many others are doing the same thing—they may not employ the same methods, but much of their actions have a similar goal behind them. After all, nobody really wants to be an outsider.