The Kintsugi School for the Gifted and Talented

So many parts of all these stories are mine, too.

I'm completely beat from being "on" all day with my debaters, so I can't make a coherent post about school stuff, but I'm feelin' the feels. My quasi-boss is the Gifted and Talented Coordinator for the school district and she shuffles a bunch of of her charges into the debate program, so I spent the day with a bunch of kids Who Are What We Were. I have lots of thoughts and impressions based on my life, the posts here, and my experiences today to integrate into something coherent. Maybe tomorrow.

*solidarity* is all I have right now.

 

My breakdown in high school coincided with 9/11, which I suspect was mostly a timing thing, but I think it was the straw that broke the camel, and my inability to recover quickly from the shock started the massive shit-slide into the rest of that year.

The thing is, I'd been doing cross-ex debate for years and 9/11 basically was a big pile of WELP ALL THOSE THINGS YOU'VE BEEN SAYING IN ROUNDS FOR YEARS THAT WOULD RUIN THE WORLD???? THEY'RE ALL HAPPENING. Plus there was a massive shift in the way that the world was discussed in general. At least from where I was sitting (ok, at 15-17 in WA state, so), current events in the late 90s had this sort of rose-tinted feel going on. Like, well, things have sucked, but they're getting better and the cold war is still totally over which is cool. Then BLAM 9/11 and now everything is war war war forever more war and then let's follow up with some war.

I think one of the things that older millennials have that some of the younger ones don't is that we got right to the cusp of adulthood before the rug got ripped out from under us. I'm not saying it's a slice of cake for people 5-10 years younger than me, but there was no build-up or warning, it was just SLAM, FUCK YOUR DREAMS.

 

I'm pretty sure it was solely because I'd never done that kind of math, and also it was acknowledged as being hard so she went over it a lot
and also because it was diagrams and the lab was same day and I am such a kinesthetic learner

like
I feel like my style of learning fucked me up more than anything, because I have to write stuff down several times, with drawings, or I won't learn it, or be able to physically put it together. I have friends who are largely visual learners and I am filled with jealousy.
so much jealousy

 

This was what I did until trigonometry, except I would do basically the whole thing in my head. Like, look at problem, figure out which formula we were just taught applies, get answer. And I could never explain how I did it, because it seemed so obvious. I drove my teachers crazy because I never showed my work, because I never had any pencil-and-paper work to show. And then trig happened, and I couldn't do it all in my head, so I had to write out chunks of the formulas, which I thought meant I was no longer Good At Math, and thus I was a failure and disappointing everyone by Not Living Up To My Potential, and I didn't deserve support or help from anyone.

I'm really glad I'm not in high school anymore.

 

In seventh grade the math teacher was nice but the way he would teach us to answer the problem would confuse me for two straight days (during which I would say nothing because questions=bad) and then I'd finally have a light bulb go off in my brain and I'd figure out a way to make the numbers do what they were supposed to. Thankfully he didn't take points off if we worked out a problem the way that wasn't standard. They do now. Which. Makes some sense. But still bothers me at times XD

 

This was half my professors in college. I am very strong in math but sometimes I just copied down the lines and went back through the textbook later to make sense of it. The really annoying thing is when the textbook skips steps...

Some of the most effective math teachers are former struggling math students, because understanding what parts students might not understand is absolutely vital. I had to get that understanding the hard way.

 

Admittedly, i also had a giant crush on the professor, who was like this incredibly smart & attractive mid-30s Indian woman named Mojdeh. So I paid a lot of attention in class.

#hides head in hands #only god can judge me

 

So, um, I've not been on Kintsugi long but boy is a lot of this familiar. It's like, being smart is a good thing until you twist yourself in pretzels mentally over it.

So, okay, I got thrown into the Gifted program right after I changed school districts in middle school. Now, as far as I can tell I am neurotypical but that does not mean I can do social skills. Now, I can kind of do an impression of them, with effort, but back then--nope. So, basically no friends in school, I got teased/bullied some...and then in swoops some teacher and tells me, "You're smart enough to be considered Gifted." So, I basically started tying my self-worth to my academic performance...and I promptly continued with that until college, even after I made friends and figured out how to get along with them.

I was really, really lucky in that I didn't have some sort of illness/catastrophic life event that resulted in my grades spiraling. Even luckier that my school's curriculum stayed where I expected it to--I was able to get the grades I expected in everything except for math, which for me was Always Chaotic Evil. But if that hadn't happened I probably would've lost it at some point. As it was, one year I had a really irrational math teacher who couldn't actually teach and I got a C on a midterm. I was normally a stereotypically well-behaved kid but after that, I started demanding explanations and ended up basically shouting at her that it wouldn't have happened if she'd actually been teaching and then starting to cry. Ugh.

So I finally figured out that this was the thing that was happening--I'd got my self-worth tangled up in my academics--in college, and I promptly started trying to fix it before something bad happened. During that process, I talked to my mom about it, and told her what I figured out, and she was just like, "I know."

Turns out she'd known I was doing it at the time and figured it was probably more constructive than other coping mechanisms I could've come up with, so she let it happen. My dad too, actually. I actually have a pretty good relationship with my family, but I really felt betrayed, right then? Because, like, I knew this was a bad thing, that I'd done. I knew that if I kept doing it it was gonna backfire on me eventually. So if they knew I was doing it why didn't they tell me to cut it out or something?

Anyhow, I'm currently up at 1 a.m. my time after working for a few hours straight on a project for my graduate degree, so the self-deprogramming campaign was only partially successful. Like, I am slowly but surely working up to not caring, until there's a deadline and I'm gonna fail and suddenly it's the apocalypse approaching all over again.

I do this, too, even if I try not to and I don't like to admit I do it. I get frustrated way too easily with things because I'm used to being good at them. Or at least to understanding them. Like, I have a really bad stubborn streak that occasionally offsets this (ex: that summer I worked maintenance at a golf course), but I still tend to hate doing things I'm not good at.

 

oh god, i do this
usually i pass it off with a joke, but

I refuse to learn the anna kendrick cup thing because i don't think i'll do well
people talk about it and i get weirdly angry

like seriously what the hell

on the other hand, for some reason, i actually can't learn most card games. no idea why. my brother has taught me euchre 8 times. i have no idea how to play euchre

 

Best maths teacher I ever had (until VI form) got a third from an unprestigious uni. I know this because some smirking, confrontational boy in my class asked her. She was an incredible teacher who only taught the bottom sets and the extracurricular advanced maths course. She was also fat and serious about discipline, so students made fun of her behind her back. Toughest teacher I've ever known, and great at patient explanations.

 

I was reading through this thread and thinking 'oh my god why didn't I have a moment when I realised I couldn't coast by any more' and then I realised that I sorta kinda did but I didn't think it counted.
I coasted my way through my GCSEs and only got semi-decent grades (One C, in drama, which was... not entirely my fault; a few Bs and As and a smattering of A*s, most proud of the double A* in science) which I knew at the time was because I didn't revise (US folks read: study, I guess? what you do to refresh your memory for exams) and work because my mother kept telling me it was because I didn't revise and work. I can't revise. I just. I don't know how. 'Make notes of your notes'? Okay, but how do I cope with losing concentration approximately five seconds in because it's so impossibly dull? The closest I've ever come to finding a revision method that works for me is turning my notes into stick figure comic strips, and even that doesn't always do it. So yeah, I coasted through GCSEs because even at the time I knew they didn't really count for shit, and I got into sixth form at my school and I feel like I kind of did start to work but I didn't notice I was because there was a routine oh my god there was a routine, I did all my homework during free periods when I had the school computer lab and the library and then I could go home and wind down. So it still felt like I wasn't really putting all that much effort in. I mean maybe I got fed up of my English teacher telling me the homework essays I did weren't good enough so I put a bit more effort in so she'd quit, but it still wasn't me stretching myself by any means. I actually revised, moreso than usual, for my AS exams, because we had a puppy at the time so I fell into the habit of play with puppy --> he'd go to sleep --> I'd revise ---> he'd wake up ---> play with puppy. So I got straight As (no A*s for A-levels at that point. and except for General Studies which was weird and didn't count). Then when A2 exam time came round the puppy wasn't a puppy any more so I'd lost that means of arranging my revision time and I tried, I did, but I feel like I didn't succeed maybe as well as I previously had on the revision front? I think I remember people saying that, probably my mum. But because of the good grades in the AS exams I still got straight As.
Then I hit university and honestly through like first year at least I don't think I was putting any more effort in than I was for A-levels but I still got great marks. The first time I got a 2:1 in an essay rather than a First I freaked out and cried because even though it was only two marks below 70% (cutoff for a First) it felt like I had let everyone down. Because if there's one thing I can do, apparently, I can write essays. I just can. At the beginning I was really trying hard with making notes from books like lecturers asked me to but then executive function issues happened and I stopped being good about it and I felt terrible even though I still did all the research for essays and got good marks. I think during second year was when I really started 'trying', and I know that when I was doing my dissertation in third year I was doing things like going to the library at like 9am and staying there till 6pm researching and writing which should be 'trying' in anyone's book? But it. Never felt like I was ever putting in the effort other people did. Because I didn't do it all the time, i think. I think I night-before wrote an essay a grand total of once because the very thought panicked me so much I always started the work well before the deadline and half the time I was handing things in like a week early or at least a couple of days, which makes me feel like a fraud saying I have executive dysfunction issues too. I realised I had a peculiar attitude to grades when I happened to go and pick up a marked essay along with two or three other people in the same class, and they were all punching the air and going 'whoo!' about their 69%s and 70%s and I was looking at my 72% and going 'meh, could have done better'.

My secondary school didn't have a Gifted programme I don't think. They just were concerned about me because I failed to have any friends. My primary school used to give me and some other kids advanced maths lessons in the lower years, which I quite enjoyed (I didn't get poisoned on maths until later when it got harder and I hadto try and also i had shitty teachers), and then in like years three and four and five me and a few others would go up to the year above for Literacy and Numeracy lessons (...reading/writing and maths) but only for those lessons. My mum hated that system and said it just served to other me further but I don't remember hating it but then I don't remember my thoughts and feelings throughout most of school except when they got really intense.
People have always told me I'm smart though. My mum, a lot. She always said that my best was good enough, which is great, but then if I said something like 'I think I would be happy if i graduated uni with a 2:1' she would say things like 'I think you ought to aim for a First, I think you can do it'.
I have problems like a lot of you with quitting if I'm not immediately good at things. And I'm afraid to try things in case I fail because failing is terrible. I had a massive breakdown when I only got 55% (a 2:2) on a practical archaeology thing at uni because it was the lowest grade I'd ever got. And because I was given it based on things I thought were unfair but the archaeology dept refused to discuss it for bullshit reasons (a lot of people were unhappy with their grades, but the professors seemed to see this as a failing in us, not in them), but the initial shock and panic was purely from the grade.

This is a horrific train-of-thought ramble and I'm not sure it even makes any sense. Oops.

 

this, so much, I skated through all gen science classes by drawing weird little comics

 

I have like six pages of the very basics of Ancient Egyptian history from the time before it was a great power to the time the Romans invaded
Mostly what I learned is that it just kept going in the same old cycle and even when people invaded the cycle still continued
Also one guy started off his pharoah-ship by going out and CONQUERING AND FIGHTING and then got bored with that and spent the rest of his very long reign just building temples everywhere.

 

I never understood making notes of your notes? Like, how do people have the patience? I need to take notes in class, at least a little, it is how I concentrate (as evidenced by my current web design class, where the CSS demos are so fast I can't take notes sometimes and so I remember nothing from those parts of class) but I never recopied them unless I needed to for an assignment or something.

I usually study with homework or practice tests, and maybe flashcards if it's visual or really hard. But liberal arts grad school has not a lot of tests, so...I just have to write papers, and do projects, and I can usually handle that.

 

god notes are impossible for me to write. my handwriting was so shit sophomore year I gave up. The people who can make notes of their notes are scary and impressive.

I pretty much just listen, and now they have the powerpoints online via blackboard so if I really need to check things I go through those. I'd love to be able to record lectures, honestly. I learn with my hands and ears.

 

i jot things down, but they're rarely full sentences and don't make much sense unless you've been in the same lecture. i like the professors who post the lecture notes online before class, so i can make notes around those.

 

i used to be terrible at taking notes but then i realized that making them organized was so much more satisfying for me than not doing them at all *___* like, my chem notes are organized like a legit outline- chapter title with a roman numeral, subsets and then subsets within subsets. which.......is probably actually a lot more work but i find it really organizationally satisfying //sobs