gothiccharmschool:

bleedthewineunholy:

ladynorbert:

thequantumqueer:

orochimemelord:

severus-snape-is-a-butt-trumpet:

is there a word for “i was instantly good at a lot of things as a quote-unquote gifted child, and, as a result, i was able to skate by without ever being taught how to actually learn a new skill, and now that i’m an adult trying to learn new things that i can’t be good at instantaneously, i don’t have the patience or knowledge to improve on them, because skills that don’t come naturally to me just make me angry because i lived off instant gratification my whole childhood due to not ever being challenged intellectually or taught basic learning skills?” asking for a friend

people like this piss me the fuck off

why does everyone refuse to consider the possibility that maybe an education system designed from the ground up to turn intelligent and creative children into mindlessly efficient factory drones might have a negative effect on the people it deems (correctly or not; usually not) to be more intelligent and creative than average?

we were punished for “learning too fast” by having the lessons about how to learn taken away from us, and by couching it all in positive language so that our peers would resent and isolate us. literally all of us know we’re not better than anyone else, but that doesn’t seem to matter in the face of “i was jealous in elementary school and have held on to that for 15+ years.”

when we say things like “i don’t know how to learn things that i don’t immediately understand” you hear “i was that kid you hated because i never studied but i always got a 100% on the test anyway,” but what we mean is:

• i have a vague understanding of what a flash card is, but no idea how to make them or what to do with them
• i have literally no idea how to take notes because:
• i don’t know what i’ll forget if i don’t write it down
• i don’t know how to pay attention to what’s being said while i write
• i wouldn’t know what to do with the notes anyway
• if i don’t understand something, i don’t know how to formulate a question
• i don’t know how to recognize when i don’t know something until it goes wrong, at which point i don’t know how to identify what i did wrong
• i can’t tell the difference between a mistake that’s part of the learning process and a mistake where i should know better

but yeah, if we ever acknowledge any of this, we’re definitely just being ungrateful whiners who don’t realize how good we had it when we were 7

All of this. 

THIS IS WHY MY 5TH GRADE VALEDICTORIAN ASS HAS STRUGGLED SO FUCKING MUCH IN COLLEGE.

I legit don’t know how to take notes. I just indiscriminately copy down massive chunks of text, with no clue as to what I should focus on or what will be on the test. I do not know how to use flash cards. I don’t really understand what exactly “studying” means, I just read the 64 page chapter and copy things til my hands hurt. I know that doesn’t work because none of it is sticking, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to make it stick. One of my professors is going to allow us to use one side of a flash card with notes on it during the quizzes, and I have no fucking clue how I’m supposed to condense 26 pages of my “notes” onto one side of a fucking flash card. This is what we mean when we talk about our education system being fucking broken. They can’t even teach us how to fucking LEARN in the first place.

• if i don’t understand something, i don’t know how to formulate a question
  
• i don’t know how to recognize when i don’t know something until it goes wrong, at which point i don’t know how to identify what i did wrong

Let me tell you, my loves, as someone who WAS one of those people who wrote book reports and term papers the night before they were due and walked off with the high grades: these sorts of things, especially the two I quoted, will seem like insurmountable hurdles. They will gnaw at you and choke you with Impostor’s Syndrome. The words “… could do so much more if you just applied yourself!” will never stop echoing from all of those report cards and progress reports.

… and if you’re very lucky, and grind yourself through the frustration and doubt and despair, you start to teach yourself how to learn. I won’t lie; the process SUCKS, and it is never-ending. (Sweet weeping Dewey-decimal system, it is never-ending.) But you CAN teach yourself to learn. 

(Thus ends the pep-talk from your Auntie Jilli, who somehow survived the “Gifted Child” program and managed to start learning how to formulate questions.)