Gifted Child Syndrome, part 2, segueing into Talking About Myself

[ailbhe]

I've been out all day, but can now sit down and maybe think properly witter about what I jotted down for the previous entry. Somebody stop me if there is actually a real condition called "Gifted Child Syndrome", because I heard it in casual conversation and am using it as a useful tag for my own witterings and I'd hate to find that I was mis-educating people about something that psychotherapists could mis-educate them about much better. Trust me, that sentence looked even worse with the proper grammar.

I know a lot of people who produced unusual results, particulary in academic or performance fields, at an early age (I'm not going into why - innate talent, specifically admired or encouraged talent, born into a culture that doesn't recognise the concept of inability - whatever). A large number of these people, having once produced a certain standard, were expected - whether by their families, teachers or peers, and sometimes by themselves (though I strongly suspect that that is induced rather than innate) - to continue to produce or exceed that standard. "I got eight As and a B" - "What's the B in?". See also "So how come you could get 99 but not 100?" and "You've never failed an audition before - what did you do wrong?" (Though many people experienced far less overt versions of the same thing, such as "How lovely, dear, you nearly got an A!")

The people who grow up with these expectations seem to grow up believing that they should be able to meet them. And it's actually pretty hard to produce your best work all the time. Most of the people I know who grew up like that tend to totally avoid the things they're average at, let alone the things they're bad at. "Good enough" isn't good enough. "Good enough" is actually failure, for them, because they're supposed to excel. And people who are supposed to excel can't fail. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I have found this bothering me a couple of times recently. One, I started dancing lessons. I had never done ballroom dancing before and didn't know whether I'd be any good or not. Actually getting to enough lessons to find out that I am, more or less, on the good side of average was - seriously - almost impossible. The idea of doing something without knowing beforehand whether or not I'd be able to do it was enough to make me sick to my stomach. This may have been the first time I did this of my own volition.

The other time, I started an Open University course. I did one last year, which was fine. This year, however, it's actually not piss-easy.

It requires work.

And I can't do it. I can't work at it. I can't make myself believe that I, The Great Ailbhe, who sailed through her entire educational career getting above-average results without even trying to think about effort, might have to work at something educational. But I do have to and - this is the killer - I enjoy it when I manage to force myself to do it. I'm not lazy; I often do all sorts of things I don't want to do which have to be done. The only thing about this that's stopping me is the feeling that I ought to be naturally able to do it better.

Having to galls me. I feel appallingly inferior when I realise that I can't just skim-read the material and produce an adequate essay in a couple of hours. And having discovered that, I can't produce a barely-adequate one and tell myself "I could have done a good one if I'd wanted to," either, which I know for a fact I've done before.

I like learning stuff. I really do. But I object to anything that smacks of forced education. Always have.

My history teacher used to shout at me for not working. He told the whole class that he didn't understand why I didn't put the effort in, since I was obviously intelligent enough to do really well. I believe I just stood still and said nothing. Probably sullenly.

I still don't understand why one should work hard to pass exams to get into a different educational establishment to pass exams. I don't get this whole exams business.

I used to worry about my kids' education. Then I realised that we can send 'em to school to learn about stuff like interacting with other people, and having to spend a large portion of your day somewhere you hate doing mostly pointless things, and other important lessons for life, and everything else they can learn outside school, if they're not learning it in there. Certainly most things you can learn out of books will be available to them. I might have trouble with lab work.

My mother also hated school. She understood, when I was 15 and attending school about once a month, why I was behaving that way. She even went to see the head and tried to work out ways to make school more bearable for me - and the head, bless her, did try, at least a bit. It wouldn't have been possible to succeed, at that stage; they would have had to leave me with access to the school library, a rough outline of the syllabus, and free rein to go and ask a teacher when I had questions. That's not practical in one of the highest academic standard schools in the country; they have to concentrate on farming people for exams.

I should actually try to think coherently about all this, when I am well and so on. At least when I am well and want to think about it I'll have this kind of wibble to refer back to.

Comments

[anejo.livejournal.com]

If it's any consolation, I know exactly how you feel. It's the thing that's terrifying me about the possibility of going to uni. I've had to work once in my life and that was for about two days before my CCNA exam. I don't know if I'm going to be able to work for two years, because I shouldn't have to work. I should be smart enough to just sail through it, getting fantastic marks.

[ailbhe]

The reward system works for me, more or less. I get a reward for every hour of study I do. (Actually I get a "point" and ten points make "permission to buy a book").