on why i'm smart . . . now.

i just sat here for well over an hour and poured this story out, which started out as a comment on my [awesome and apparently inspiring] former boss's blog.  i realized after about four lines that this was going to open a can of worms more suited for my own blog than someone else's.

i suggest taking the time to read the blog behind the link below to understand the topic at hand.  as an overview, it talks about the difference between a fixed-mindset and a growth-mindset in children when it comes to intelligence and learning.  a fixed-mindset would say, "i've been told i'm smart.  success should come naturally to me.  if i work hard and don't do well, i should avoid doing this again."  a growth-mindset would say, "i've worked hard, and now i've learned something new.  working hard brings success, so i'm going to keep working hard and try new things to continue doing well."

can you guess which one i was?

***
i wish someone had written this information on the effects that intelligence and forms of praise have on education and given it to me on my first day of school in fourth grade.  although i'm rather happy with the way i've turned out, knowing this could have eradicated years of good education wasted.

at some point in third grade, our school system gave us a standardized test to see if we qualified for the "honors program," an advanced program for kids who demonstrated a higher level for learning than the 'regular' kids.  apparently, i did well [i have no recollection of this test] and my parents, excited to have a 'smart' kid, put me in the program.

this program took us out of our regular class for half a day, traveling from one school to another, separating us from our former peers.  essentially, the accelerated track had us skip whatever was learned in fourth grade and put us in the fifth grade books - completely assuming that we were 'smart' enough to either already know or put two and two together about what we were missing.

at first, i loved this program.  as a child who didn't have many friends in her original class because A. she was the 'replacement' redhead [a topic for another time] and B. she could read on a sixth grade level in first, it sounded like a safe haven.  everyone around me could do so much more than our other classmates, and it was inspiring.  i wanted to be just as good as the best kids in the class . . . but it wasn't long before i realized i had to work twice as hard as them to keep up.

math has never been a strong point for me, and in this program, we skipped a key lesson - how to add in our heads.  to this day, i still count on my fingers; or, more discretely, i count imaginary dots on the sides of the number on the page.  so, as a recently pegged "official smart kid," i lost my faith in myself when i realized i couldn't even complete the timed math problem sheets we were required to do every week, let alone work on par to my classmates.

but i was told i was smart!  my parents believed in my inherent intelligence and placed me in this program, where i was supposed to do great things!  i felt like i should be able to be top of the class . . .  yet here i was, failing.

failing was unacceptable.

i studied, and studied, and studied, and still, i struggled.  after my classmates moved on from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division, and i was still attempting to complete [for the first time] the addition time sheets, i'd come home and cry out of resentment.  i hated math.  HATED MATH. 

somewhere, in my little mind, i decided that since i hated math, i didn't care about math.  and if i didn't care about math, then i didn't need to try so hard at it.  there were so many other things i was good at!  why should i do something that's just going to cause me to fail and make my parents mad? 

thus started the downward spiral.  anytime a subject became too hard, where studying twice as much as my classmates wouldn't produce the same grade, i gave up.  i lost interest.  i stopped caring. 

once i stopped caring, i realized i could slip by on a decent grade by doing minimal work.  i took on the mantra that i was "the dumb kid in the smart kid's class."  after all, there has to be someone at the bottom, right?

looking back, my mom knew exactly what was happening.  she told me, later on in life, that she was the same way as a kid.  if a subject wasn't interesting, she didn't care, and she would put in only enough effort to pass.  maybe, at the time, she didn't know how to solve the problem because she realized we were exactly the same.  or maybe, she thought if she came down hard on me, i'd fix my ways and get back on track.  either way, i vividly remember nights of yelling and crying about homework that i just didn't want to do because it was HARD. but if i was so 'smart,' then why was it so hard?  i didn't want to fail, and i felt like if i put in the effort and still failed, then i was worse than a failure - i wasn't smart anymore.  i couldn't bear the thought of not being my mom's smart child anymore.

moving from elementary to junior high and then to senior high school didn't change a thing.  every year, i'd excel in certain classes, and falter miserably in others.  my art and english classes were highlights, with math trailing in the wind.  i did relatively well in history, but i didn't care about it.  all those dates - numbers - to remember made my head spin, and i became aware immediately that everything we studied was driven by war [another topic for another time].  science would vary as well, with biology stronger than chemistry or physics. 

do we see the correlation here?  anything needing math skills or revolving around numbers got pushed to the end of my priority list, with the constant creative points being number one.  when i put effort into my writing or art, i found success, and all i wanted was to finally be GOOD at something.  i cared about these creative outlets more than i had cared about any subject in my ten years as a student, and it was liberating.  i felt like finally, i'm smart, just like they said so long ago.

i could have gone to a big, great college.  i had enough AP credits and had taken a year and a half of remedial math study at the end of high school to make up for the deficit in my education.  i had extra curricular activities, and i placed relatively well on my SAT's and SAT2's.  instead, i opted for a small, average college.  it wasn't where the spectacular kids went . . .  but there, i felt like i could finally put in effort and achieve success.

a funny thing happened when i went to college.  after about three miserable weeks of being a biology major, i had an epiphany when my teacher spoke the words "organic chemistry" in reference to what courses were required next.

i said to myself, "i don't want to take organic chemistry.  i don't HAVE to take organic chemistry!  i pick my own classes here, and i'm [via my grandparents, thank you] paying for it.  i should take all classes i WANT to take, classes that make me happy!  classes where i can work hard and actually do well!"

from that day on, even my math classes seemed so much brighter.  i knew that once i was done with that class, i never HAD to take a math class again.  i could take literature and writing and languages, and eventually, design and photography and painting and sculpture and yes - even art history! 

and, from that day on, i realized that i WAS smart - just in a different way than my former classmates.  while they're now doctors and lawyers and perpetual students, i'm a creative mind.  i'm an artist. 

i can take the hundreds of thousands of words floating around in my brain and turn them into stories.  i can take the millions of notes humming through my bones and turn them into songs.  i can see fleeting moments in life and capture them as memories for all time.  i can stand among just a few to a few thousand people and sing my heart out, illustrating melodies written by amazing composers, from songs committed to memory to ones i'm reading for the first time.

***
sometimes i wonder what would have happened if i hadn't been placed in that program.  if i hadn't been overwhelmed in the challenge, or if i had been told my efforts were more important than the end result.  if i hadn't needed to live up to expectations of excellence, and been encouraged to excel on my own.

although the journey was hard, and not one i'd like to live over again, i feel like i was given a second chance to succeed with college.

thank goodness i opened my eyes to see the wealth of knowledge available to me.

and thank goodness for the ability to see what happens when passion and creativity come together.

quite amazing, isn't it?