I am not a nerd. I am not geeky. I am not desperate. I am not naïve, I am not freakish, I am not an idiot.

And my name is most certainly not Smarty Pants.

It's Hope. My name is Hope. Just bam: Hope. It means 'hope', it literally is hope. I mean, not the name. The name Hope will never give hope to anypony. But it's a homograph.

You can have hope without being called Hope. You can also be called Hope without having it. For me, I both have hope and am called it.

Which is rare. The irony of being called Hope is that most take it as pressure, a burden, a responsibility. It's none of that; it's just a title.

Which also makes it surprising that I even have it, since my usual title is 'Smarty Pants.' Oh, you inventive little bullies who heard that name somewhere and decided it should totally be mine, too. How I wish you bothered to know the truth.

Okay, so I am smart. No, not that kind of smart: I'm clumsy, messy and I have no sense of formal fashion. Frankly, if I was that kind of smart I'd be more popular.

No, I'm talking about the meaning of the term 'smart' when it's used in the phrase 'smarty pants'. I'm clever, is what I'm trying to say. I am intelligent. I get good grades. Full stop.

But I don't show it off like some arrogant know-it-all, which is what's implied by the nickname 'Smarty Pants'.

And I've never worn pants in my entire life. Due to my lack of interest in fashion, I haven't even worn clothes without my mom forcing me to do so.

So there you go; I am unworthy of the title 'Smarty Pants'. (Which makes it sound like a good thing, as I've just realised)

Is this now a self-defeating argument? What I'm trying to say is that I'm not a stereotypical nerd, but by attempting to do so I've ended up putting forth a point that ultimately makes the real me lower than that.

You know what? Forget it. That fact I'm explaining all this only demonstrates why I got this title in the first place: I outsmarted the most popular girl in the school.

Yes, yes: she's my social enemy, her gang of sheep help her bully me, and blah-de-blah-de-blah. Go on: hit me like your hitting your least favourite, cliché, generic, high-school movie's DVD case.

Before I go any further, let me say this: Symphony is a nice girl. She's kind to her friends. She didn't bite her way to the top of in-school popularity. She isn't mean to me just for the sake of being mean.

Her Queen-Bee position just revolves around me. Okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement: her social ascension raised her to the highest peak because of me.

Now she has this reputation for being the popular, pretty, girlfriend-of-the-hottest-colt-in-school that she cannot get out of without letting her mountain of popularity crumble in a split-second. She's the predator; I'm the prey - that's how it is and how it will stay.

That rhymed. I love poetry. Oh, so that totally means you're, like, an old-school geek and - NO. It does NOT mean that.

I don't speak in slang. I don't overuse the words 'like', 'totally', 'so' or 'basically' in places where they shouldn't be used. My speech is grammatically correct, mostly because it confuses other kids so they leave me alone instead of irritating me further.

Survival of the fittest, for me, is all about the complicated terms you use. Otherwise, I'd have probably stopped hoping a long, long time ago.

You know how, on a keyboard, 'U' and 'I' are together, then underneath that it says 'JK' and underneath that it says 'NM'?

That's the story of my life, right there.

Even now, I still fall for false friendships. Time after time, somepony will sympathise with me, defend me, earn my trust and coax my secrets out, so they can then spread rumours that I can't deny truthfully.

I'm bad at lying. If I wasn't, then I'd be able to make myself a false personality like its nopony's business. Trust me; I've tried. It didn't work out.

If you were to have a conversation with me, then I'd eventually find some way to talk about schoolwork. Not because I'm a nerd, but because nine times out of ten we'd be in school, and that other ten percent of the time would be in my bedroom, where there are bits of homework everywhere.

And nopony wants to talk about schoolwork, right? So then you'd go and tell your friends that, from what you can tell, I love doing my homework.

Then they'd tell their friends - who really should be your friends too but you've never really gotten round to it - and soon it's spreading like a disease.

And I can't repeat a lecture every time somepony asks me if its true, because they'd just walk away, their interpreted answer being 'yes'. I'm willing to repeat it time and time again, however tiresome or laborious for myself it may be. I still try too hard to get somewhere on the social board, because that's my insurmountable optimism acting up.

The thing is, I do enjoy doing my homework. But it's for a different reason to the one you still expect, despite my insistent arguing that I'm not a nerd. It's fine, I understand.

Everypony finds homework boring. I find it boring. I'd rather doodle, or read, or listen to music, or even sleep. I'd rather do anything else, really. So what do I do on the night before it's due? I make a game out of it. I coax myself into having fun while I'm working on it, and before I know it I've put a magnificent amount of effort and thought into one measly bit of schoolwork.

I would stop and produce average, generic pieces of work, but my mom has come to expect more of me and I wouldn't even be able to do it if it wasn't the slightest bit exciting.

Which does count as loving to do homework, I guess.

My appearance is really quite different from other colts and fillies.

For starters, my mane, tail  and coat all consist of neither warm nor cool colours. They are three separate shades of gray.

I've never cared enough about my appearance to dye my hair. And efforts these days just come across as neediness, from the perspective of my classmates.

I have no piercings, not even ones in my ears. I don't slap on huge amounts of concealer to hide fatigue, nor do I laden my eyes with tons of eye-shadow. And, as I've already said, I don't wear clothes, either.

I wouldn't stand out at all, if it wasn't for one thing: my eyes.

Two opposite colours: royal blue and magenta. Different coloured eyes. It's the first thing anyone notices about me, and something nopony forgets.

It's so rare, heterochromia, that I should show it off like a majestic peacock, because my irises are coloured two incredibly striking hues.

And I would, if I had any figment of an idea as to what I'd do about the rest of my dull, unmemorable figure.

For whatever reason, the other kids think this means I wear glasses. Which I don't, by the way. My vision is perfect: neither long nor short-sighted. But that doesn't seem to affect the fact that I have another nickname: 'four-eyes'.

It wouldn't be technically accurate even if I did wear glasses.

It's not as consistent as 'Smarty Pants' - even the teachers have started calling me that now; they use it in hopes that they're somehow keeping up-to-date with modern informalities. They're even worse at bonding with the school kids than I am.

I guess the worst part of all this is that I can never say a word against it. I don't have the courage, attitude or tactical thinking required to stand up for myself.

I do care. Maybe it's not clear, but I do. It hurts - badly - that I don't have any friends, that I don't fit in, and that I'm bullied because of it.

So what if I don't speak the way you do? So what if I'm not interested in the same music as you are? So what if I'm not into fashion? So what if I'm dull? So what if I'm different?

So what if I'm not exactly the same as you are?

Nopony's exactly the same. Even idiots know that. Everypony knows it; we're told it every day, in some way.

I just don't have the courage to remind them.