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cappuccinopoweredsprite · 4 months

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Hi!

For the 'not from the US' ask set numbers 4, 5, 11 and 15 please (only if you don't mind)

Hiii!!

4. favourite dish specific for your country?

answered in the previous ask!

5. favourite song in your native language?

Frankly, it's a tossup between Áno by DMS and Beh by Korben Dallas.

Áno is one of the best bits of local mainstream hip hop (genuinely, I remember asking someone who was into Czech/Slovak hip hop if it gets better than DMS and they said no). It's a bop overall, the lyrics are neither cringe nor 65% English (kind of a rarity) and the Richard Müller feature on the hook spices things up, although I wouldn't say the song tries to break the mold in any major way. It is something of a comfort song for me.

On the other hand, I feel Beh is much more thought-provoking and much "deeper" as a piece of media or a piece of art. The lyrics lend themselves to interpretation, they can be about being out of one's comfort zone and not knowing what to do, or, I don't know, about pissing off to another country in search of good education and all the learning to live on one's own that comes with that... yes it is a highly relatable song to me how could you tell (fun fact, in about 9th grade - so 5 years ago - I had a school task about interpreting this exact song. I remember just sitting there like the personification of the thinking emoji... young kubbo had no idea)

11. favourite native writer/poet?

I'll go with Juraj Červenák, a well-known historical fiction writer. In short, I'd say his books are consistently good, although not amazing. Their themes are kind of getting old but in my opinion, but then I've read several of his book series in full. I'm especially interested in the next installment of his Šarkanove poklady series.

Dušan Dušek also deserves a shout-out for just about the best mandatory-reading work I had to read for school. The book in question being a collection of short stories titled Kufor na sny (in translation: Dream suitcase or Suitcase for dreams). Much like Cotton-Eyed Joe, many of the short stories had me baffled by where they were going and how did they get here, wherever "here" may have been. Which in turn made me think, which is what a high-quality book should do. Or so I've heard.

15. a saying, joke, or hermetic meme that only people from your country will get?

I've answered this one last time this ask game went around and my answer would be just about identical. Only now my disposition is a tiny bit ironic as I live in the Czech Republic.

Thank you for the ask! <33

#ask tag #waywardwizzard

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emptymanuscript · 5 months

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Sweet jesus... I'm watching this video right now by a psychologist talking about the experience of being a gifted child and it is RESONATING.

What's really particularly catching my attention right now, about a third of the way through, is the negative feedback loop about putting in the same amount of effort and getting worse results.

And I can point right to that in my own life.

I am particularly thinking of experiences that I think happened about a year apart.

In 9th grade English I had Mrs. Harper. Mrs. Harper was one of my favorite teachers in high school. Tiny little alkie who had soooo had it with us little shits and all our BS. I think she retired two or three years after I graduated XD because she finally just couldn't take these bad kids anymore XD. :/ I think she died a couple of years after I graduated college :/ tell the teachers you like that they're important while you can, I guess.

But she was the first teacher to ever fail me on any kind of test outside of STEM classes. And I was just devastated. I had read the book. I had read the notes. I was even interested and enjoyed the reading. And I told her: I studied.

She said she knew I had. She could tell I had done the work. She just taught High School, so the standard was higher. I had to do more than simply show I had done the work. Now I needed to extrapolate new stuff of my own that I hadn't been already given. But now I knew what the new standard was and she was sure I could work harder to meet it the next time and get better grades going forward. One F wasn't the end of the world, it was simply a guide post to how I needed to adjust. Just treat it like a tool to look for the sorts of thinking I needed to do.

And you better believe that was the only test I didn't pass for any class I ever took with Mrs. Harper. I was an A student for her because she told me exactly what I needed to do to meet her standards. She never expressed any doubt that I was capable of it or that I had done something wrong. Just, ok, you've reached this level, I see that, I believe you, I trust you, I just want more. Let's go for the next level. You can do it.

She got me. And she gave me what I needed. And how much I liked Mrs. Harper was something of a running joke because I appreciated that so much. She never let me slack but she was very consistent and clear once I understood what she was saying. Her grades always made perfect sense. Her behavior was consistent from the first to the last time I saw her.

I don't want to imply by contrast that Mrs. Surdaki was not a good teacher. Or that she didn't understand kids. I liked Mrs. Surdaki fine. I would even put her above average. And I feel like she did her best. Had a good heart. No general, abstract complaints. It's simply that she gave me the exact opposite of what I needed when I needed it.

I had her for history the following year. And she gave us the biggest term paper that any of us had ever gotten up to that point. And she let us have a lot of leeway in the topic. So I got to pick what I felt was very important to me and it motivated me to go the extra mile. I feel it is relevant to point out that I recycled parts of that paper multiple times, including in college, to get A's. So, from that perspective, you can say she actually provoked the best in me.

She gave me a B-.

I wasn't devastated. I was furious. I had worked my butt off on that paper. In my opinion, it was an A+ paper, and this was plain unfair. Again, while I never exactly recycled that paper in full, I did reuse a lot of it and got A's. In college. I now have a Masters degree in teaching my field. It may not have been an A+ paper but I am actually angrier in retrospect than I was at the time. The grade she gave me was exactly what you should not do to a student from everything that I've learned about education.

So I demanded to know what was wrong with it. Why had I gotten a B- for that work?

And she said it was because she knew I could do better. She knew I hadn't done the very best I was capable of. She wanted me to exert more effort. And she had graded me according to that disappointment in my effort versus my potential.

The problem is that Mrs. Surdaki was absolutely 100% wrong. I put more effort into that paper - because I was able to choose what I really cared about and was deeply important to me - than I had done for any other paper before. Or afterwards for the rest of high school. Not just because of the level expected from the paper - I should also note that I was never asked in college to write a paper that long - but because I cared and wanted to do a good job. I had, in fact, exceeded myself.

She hadn't raised the bar on me like Mrs. Harper had with a new standard I simply hadn't yet understood. She had pulled the rug out from under me. What she had told me, without intending to, was that the expectations were arbitrary. They were what she wanted them to be. And what she wanted from me was more. Not a specific more but an abstract, oh, you're really gifted, I know you can do something amazing but you didn't wow me, so down your grade goes.

Who thinks I tried hard again for Mrs. Surdaki?

Again, didn't particularly dislike her. If anything I did like her. She was fun. Young and not yet jaded by us evil little hellions. Easy to get along with if you didn't actually try to cause shit.

And I got perfectly fine grades. If I recall correctly I passed her class with a solid B. Because I stopped trying and she eventually decided that she had been wrong and nope, I couldn't actually do better. So: whatever. And we both just coasted through History.

While Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Surdaki were the first. They certainly weren't the last experiences of those dynamics. People who challenged me AND gave me the tools to meet those challenges, got my best efforts. Not just my intellect but all my people pleasing and my desire to excel. People who just made it tough, fuck 'em. I don't need 'em. I'll sail through or give them the kiss off because I know I can't trust them.

It's the difference between looking at the evidence and coming to a conclusion (good) and having a conclusion for which you find evidence (bad). They might look the same on the surface but one is patently bullshit.

Unfortunately, the outcome also taught me a pattern. That I can get away with the kiss off. All I have to be is pleasant. Don't rock the boat and the bare minimum will do. What Mrs. Surdaki accidentally taught me was that most people don't know what they think they know about other people. People just guess. And if they're wrong, well, no skin off their back. Who cares, really. So she also accidentally taught me not to try until someone proved they were worth the effort and insightful enough to be trustworthy. A test that most people fail because it's easy to fail and most people don't even realize they're on the spot.

The end result: Mrs. Surdaki's conclusion was a self fulfilling prophecy that caused what she wanted to nip in the bud. Not really her fault. Certainly not her intent. Just the lesson I took.

So it goes.

It's just that I need to change that behavior now.

#just my life #gifted child #eternal burnout #I know no one else cares #just feels important to me #and I am incapable of shutting up #brevity is beyond my current skill level #I need a lot of improvement

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