All of this is so familiar.
Every time I won some kind of prize in English my parents would praise me and say I was good and should feel good. My teachers would hold me up as an example and say other kids should try to be more like me. Meanwhile, when I would bring home a report card with a C- in math, my parents would have concerned faces and tell me they were disappointed and I wasn’t living up to my potential and I needed to work harder et cetera.
And I don’t know which part bothered me more.
Every time I was held up as an example in English class, I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. I didn’t do it! I didn’t study at all, half the time I did the homework in the car on the way to school, those essays for the statewide competition were thrown together on a lark without a trace of real effort. To praise me for any of it seemed and still seems utterly unjust.
Exactly. I too won essay contests, aced AP tests and other feats in English and related fields – and you know what? I never studied. Never. Not once. I did not study for a single minute in high school anything related to English or similar subjects, not for one second.
And I aced every fucking thing. In fifth grade I scored in the top 1/10th of one percent of reading comprehension, civics and science for high school seniors on a standardized test that I literally slept through part of, and to top it off I even read another book during the actual test. There was no possible way I could have put in less effort on that test other than not doing it all (which it was so easy for me that that would have actually been more effort since the teachers would’ve punished me somehow) and I still blew it away like a Minuteman missile impacting an unsuspecting village.
And I deserve about as much credit for being so unbelievably dominant in that domain as a cheetah does for running fast. It’s just what we do, you know?
But math. Math I studied so I could actually get out of high school with a diploma (usually in English, study hall, or other classes – I almost never studied out of school). Time spent agonizing over and studying math so I’d actually graduate? I don’t know, 10,000 or 12,000 hours? Maybe more.
And I barely scraped by. In my final high school math class it literally came down to the final test. I had to score I think a 70 to pass the class with the minimum 65 and thus graduate. I got a 70 even – honestly, too. That teacher didn’t (and wouldn’t have) given it to me, so I truly earned it.
I earned it by studying with a very math-conversant friend for three weeks straight. He was simply astounded by how someone as smart as I was supposed to be just couldn’t catch on.
The thing is, I am naturally good with languages. I can teach myself to read just about any language if I really want to in about two months.
But I can’t seem to learn to use a quadratic equation or do something more complicated than solve for x even if I very much want to and spend years doing it. It just doesn’t click, I don’t grok, no matter how hard I try.
Sorry, libs, something there is such a thing as natural talent and some people have it while others don’t. For me, it’s in languages and systems and not in math. I am far more divergent than most, though – in most people it’s more well-balanced.
But yep, natural talent. It’s real and that can be sad. But that doesn’t make it pretend.
What was your high school like? Had you been born later or to different parents it sounds very likely you’d have been placed in the gifted program and gotten an IEP for a math related learning disability.
I’m not quite that dominant, but when I google my verbal IQ, the top results are for learning disabilities. My elementary school tested me every year, and the results were useless because I’d score above the test’s “frustation level.” In contrast, I could not add long sums to save my life (the numbers kept wandering all over the page) nor could I really memorize simple computations. I still reverse numbers. Between the school and my parents’ relief I wasn’t my brother and that math wasn’t necessary for girls, I floundered and barely passed high school math. Studying for the SATs actually lowered my math score while raising my verbal score (which was already high).
I wish just putting forth effort paid off proportionately for me; it doesn’t. Of course people aim their advice at average people and not outliers.
The OP, probably isn’t as lopsided as he thinks he is because he’s a psychiatrist. To be a psychiatrist (today anyways), you have to get into medical school. To get into med school with the prerequisites you have to take years of college science courses and the MCAT and you won’t pass those without a firm grasp of higher math.
I was in the gifted program. There was one teacher who took an interest in me and despite my acting out in class and coming from a “bad family” basically single-handedly got me into that program. Mrs. Skinner. Still remember her. Young, idealistic and now that I think about it probably liberal (which was really unusual where I grew up). She was a good person.
I took the old SAT, and got an 800 in verbal and a 480 in math. Yeah, a 480. I was trying on that test, too. Still a pretty high cumulative score but damn if that is not divergent!
When I realized I could spend hours and hours studying math and get no results it just seemed pointless to go on. I even like math. Just have no mind for it at all.
“The thing is, I am naturally good with languages. I can teach myself to read just about any language if I really want to in about two months.”
Wow, I’m actually envious, and envy is against my religion. At least Sydney Bristow was a fictional character.