April 29, 2010

Lesson To Be Learned

Once upon a time I was a teacher.

I taught first-year writing at a pretty big "name-brand" school and I loved it. I loved prepping materials, I loved trying to figure out where my students were currently at so I could reach them better. I tried to genuine with them. To be realistic - I mean, honestly, how many of my students really WANTED to be in the freshman English class? I knew they didn't. In nine years of beginning class with something like, "This is first year composition, the class that everyone is just dying to take," I only had one student ever tell me that yeah, he actually did want to take the class and was looking forward to it.

When the curriculum called for literature, I tried to pick stuff that was accessible. True, a lot of it was stuff that I had enjoyed, but it wasn't just that. I wanted them to not hate reading for my class. I hoped they'd enjoy at least some of it. At least as much as it was possible for an engineering major to like something he was being forced to read.

Later on, when the curriculum changed from reading literature and writing to a focus on the writing process, I struggled at first to make sure that the essays I assigned were still meaningful to my students. It took really listening to them and figuring out where they were before I was able to strike a balance between their interests and knowledge ... and starting to push them into the realm of academic discourse. I knew - then and now - that most of them didn't actually need academic discourse for anything other than getting through school. I tried to make that clear in class. We were doing things this way because learning this way of thinking meant they could tackle any other discipline with a little adaptation.

I compared academic writing to the scientific method. I compared different types of examples to cinematic close-ups and long-shots. I constantly asked them for feedback.

For many of them, it was the first time they'd ever been told their writing was not A quality. Some took it in stride and learned. Some didn't really care. Some decided I was full of shit and not to be believed.

Our class was set up so students wrote a first draft. I looked at it and gave general comments. Their peers looked at it and critiqued it. Then a second draft. I was more detailed in this draft. Their peers critiqued again. A third draft. This was the not-really-graded draft. I went through this one with a fine-tooth comb, gave them details, suggestions ... and a guide for deciphering roughly what their grade would have been if I'd actually given that draft a grade.

The idea - which came from our director - was that the students would re-write all their papers one last time for a final portfolio and THAT would be graded. He felt that putting a grade on this third draft gave them the wrong idea. I thought that not having any freaking clue how you were doing until the end of the semester in a class you didn't want to take but had to have was cruel and unusual punishment. That was my compromise. They could figure it out, but it wasn't written anywhere to remind them. (There was a whole hierarchy - a pyramid - of things they had to be able to do in a paper. Miss one block, and it was this grade, two blocks and it was that one, etc. Was fairly easy to figure out, but you always had to look it up rather than refer to it.)

The students who earned an A or a B in my class knew how to write.

They won writing awards. They were published in our first-year writing magazine.

They knew what they were doing.

The students who earned a C were passable writers. Average. But they also knew how to write.

It was damn near impossible to fail my class, but one or two each semester seemed to manage it. I would run the numbers until I was sick (except the last two years when I programmed the spreadsheet to only give me a letter grade instead of a numerical average).

I had one rule as a student went from draft to draft. Hitting print without making changes was NOT a new draft. If I could put two drafts next to each other and count five words changed/added and two new sentences in an entire ten page paper (in Times 12 point, no less - no courier short cuts in my class), then that wasn't a new draft. I told them that. Repeatedly. Said to them, "Now look, if one of you just gets it and you're on a roll and you get absolutely everything right in the first draft - as unlikely as that is because frankly that's damn hard for ANYONE to do - then I'll tell you that you don't need to change much in your next draft. I will tell you that explicitly. Otherwise? Read the suggestions from your peers. Consider them. Read my comments. Contemplate them. RE-think your points and re-write the draft. That means more than cosmetic changes."

Most of them got it. They growled. They fussed. They kicked their feet, gnashed their teeth and roared their terrible roars, but they got it.

The few who failed the class either didn't turn in the final portfolio at all (really rare) or I could literally put first draft and fourth draft side by side and see that they had really changed nothing but a couple of words.

I agonized over it every time it happened. In every instance I can remember I saw the pattern of no changes in the earlier drafts and warned them. Showed them how their classmates were taking their peers' comments and mine and changing what they'd done. Warned them that there had better be significant changes on the final or they would not pass the class because 1) the work was too weak and 2) they had failed to learn the prime directive of the class: using drafts to write.

In each case, the students were shocked that they had failed despite all of that.

I miss teaching. I miss the interactions with the students, learning from them, trying to get them a little motivated. I miss that charge when they finally got something. I miss that charge when I finally got something from them.

I don't miss grading. I don't miss "passing judgement" on their writing because that was damn hard. And, of course, every semester I was going over the same things with a new group of people - that got old. But having a student who'd always been told he was a bad student or a crummy writer - or even just average - having those students discover that they were better than they thought ... that they suddenly got how to write this kind of paper ... that was so worth it.

I doubt I will ever go back to teaching. It's been six years since I was in a classroom and it's taken me that long to be able to write this post. Honestly, I originally started this blog to try to come to terms with that lost career ... but I've not really been able to write about it until now. It was just too painful. I had to find something else ... and I've grown into a new career that I love just as much and is very, very different from what I once did.

But what I took away from that experience was the one thing that I did not teach my students. I didn't know to teach it to them.

For the great bulk of people in the world ... it doesn't actually matter how good you are at what you do. It doesn't matter how much you love what you do. Or the results you get.

It matters how you play the game. How you present yourself to the powers that be.

Not everywhere. Not in every job or company. There are some who pay attention to quality and results and I've been lucky enough to have one professional experience in such a place.

But for the vast bulk of people ... and the vast number of employers ... it's about how you present yourself and how well you play the game.

I taught my students it was the results that mattered because I thought that was true. I wish now there was some way I could teach them the truth without it coming across as cynical or disheartening, but I'm not sure there is a way to do that even if I could reach them again.

And while I've learned that lesson now ... I'm still not good at promoting myself and I never have been. I'm a "leader" from within the group, encouraging others to improve or to speak up or just that they've done a good job. Not the kind of leader that gets noticed.

I've no idea what it will take before I learn that lesson in any kind of effective way. It's a shame. I have a lot to offer if I only knew how to communicate that to the right people ... in the right way ....

It feels a lot like a puzzle for which I have no reference picture and all of the pieces are just shades of grey ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:49 PM | Comments (3) | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

October 14, 2008

The Writing Paradox

Despite the fact that English was one of my favourite school subjects, that I taught college writing classes for nine years, that I've had a blog for a bit over 3 years ... I shocked some friends last week by announcing that I hate writing and would not like to make a career in copywriting. (Oddly enough, technical writing is more interesting.)

I hated writing essays in school, and I think that was one of the things that made me an excellent writing teacher. I remembered where I used to get hung up, frustrated and what caused me to pull my hair out - and I did my damnedest to help my students find ways around those problems - or through them in a less painful manner.

The writing I enjoy is the writing I do for myself. This blog, the large directory on my hard drive called "Thinking" and writing stories.

I confused the hell out of who knows how many teachers in elementary school who knew how creative I could be ... until a creative writing assignment came up. One teacher told me years later that my first creative writing assignment for her just shocked her. Instead of the involved and creative story she had suspected I would write ... she got a typical elementary school paragraph of blah.

I just laughed ... there's a huge difference between making up your very own story ... and being given a paragraph of "starter story" and told to finish it.

It's the same in copywriting. There's a huge difference between writing a novel about a comic book writer and a video game developer who become self-appointed agents of karma ... and cobbling together the disparate ideas of the president and vice president of a start-up company (who, by the way, each has a different idea about the company's direction - president wants to market to average joe and veep wants to market to the already converted & knowledgeable audience).

Later on in elementary school, our language arts teachers began to give us more leeway on picking what to write about and only used writing prompts when we got stuck. My favourite project was also one that got me into the most trouble.

In sixth grade, I had Miss Bailey - the teacher we all loved and adored. (At the time, years later was a different story.) Every Thursday was creative writing day. But one week, on a Monday or Tuesday, she gathered us around for a new creative writing assignment.

"Since I will be gone on Thursday, I'm giving you your creative writing assignment now."

With those words, my fate was sealed.

You see, I was determined to do everything "right."

She went on, describing the project, which was due on Friday as usual. We'd have our standard amount of class time to work on it Thursday and a bit of bonus time to work on it the day she assigned it because it was a bigger assignment than normal.

We spent the next little while searching through newspapers for an article - we were to use the article we selected to write a "book" with at least two or three illustrations. I was excited - and I settled on a story about a plane crash. (What can I say, tragedy always makes for a great story! Actually, all of my early stories were about tragedy befalling kids - and kids pulling out of it despite the incompetent adults around them. But that's another story for another day.)

I dutifully cut out the article like we were told. I worked on the project during the time allotted on Monday. And then I didn't work on it again until Thursday's class. Now, I suddenly had to write a story, re-write it onto my booklet paper, illustrate it - and because I was as interested in realism and crafts as possible, create a cover cut from posterboard and then freaking SEW the thing together. (My idea. Damn over-achiever.)

Yeah, I didn't get close to finished in class. And so many of my friends told me they'd been working on it since it was assigned on Monday. I was shocked.

Thursday was creative writing day. Not Monday. Not Tuesday. They were all cheating! They started EARLY! That was cheating!

I was horrified.

I was even more depressed that evening as I stayed up later than ever before, frantically trying to complete the project to the specifications I had set myself. My mom asked why I hadn't started the project earlier in the week and I responded that we'd been assigned the project on Thursday and it was due Friday. It wasn't a lie - it was how I'd interpreted the week, since Miss Bailey claimed we were getting the assignment on Monday since she wouldn't be there Thursday.

I thought that like most teachers, she simply didn't think the substitute teacher would be able to explain the assignment adequately and address our questions. Hence, she gave us the assignment early, but we were not to start until Thursday as usual.

My mother was rather irked at Miss Bailey for assigning such a project in such a short amount of time.

And, when I was dragging and sleepy the next day, Miss Bailey asked what was wrong. I explained that I'd stayed up late - and confessed that mom was upset with me for staying up late and had asked why I hadn't started the assignment sooner. When I then added that we'd been given the assignment on Thursday and it was due Friday - Miss Bailey gave me that terribly disappointed look and tone as she said my name. We didn't speak of it further.

I was terribly confused and hurt.

I had done everything exactly right according to the rules and I had still gotten "in trouble" for doing things wrong. Everyone else in the class had cheated by starting early and here I was the one getting fussed at.

Today, were I taking a class where this happened, I would still assume the same thing. But, I would now ask the teacher "are we supposed to start on it now or on Thursday?"

I suppose this is another example of "rigid thinking." Despite the fact that I'm creative and very much a think-outside-the-box kind of person most of the time, there's a certain rigidity of thought that creeps into my life in strange ways. It's the same rigidity of thought which caused me to not study for the SAT exams - the SAT was supposed to measure what you already knew ... therefore, studying was cheating. Yeah, I know. I'm a dork.

Oh and the novel about the comic book writer and video game developer who become self-appointed agents of karma? Yeah, I've been working on that sucker since '04, so no stealing my grand concept, k?

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:19 AM | Comments (2) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

September 17, 2008

MixED meSSaGe

The scene:
You're back in fourth grade again. Ten years old. Good kid, never been in trouble before ... but your pencil sharpener breaks one evening at home. Knowing you'll need to sharpen your pencil tomorrow, you shove the pieces back in your pencilbox and don't think much of it.

School the next day, sure enough, your stupid pencil lead breaks. You pull out the broken pencil sharpener - which at this point, is essentially, a small razor blade.

End result?

Suspension "for at least two days and [he] could face further disciplinary action."
District spokesman Randy Wall said "We're always going to do something to make sure the child understands the seriousness of having something that could potentially harm another student, but we're going to be reasonable."

Original Story
The school's letter

There is a very fine balance between encouraging kids to learn and bashing them over the head with lead pipes. Most of our school districts are doing a crappy job of managing this balance. We have school districts like Dallas who are teaching our students that paying attention to the rules doesn't matter. After all, if the teacher says your homework is due Tuesday, you no longer get a zero for not turning it in - you get to turn it in for credit at any time.

And then we have these ridiculous zero tolerance policies which mean that a broken pencil sharpener - admittedly this is a blade now - means a two day suspension.

This reminds me of reading Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (NO, NOT like the movie). In one of the many "lectures" throughout the book, a teacher talks about how the twentieth century dealt with "juvenile delinquents" - and compared the method to housebreaking a dog. The character claimed that the juvenile justice system was akin to sometimes telling the dog, "naughty puppy," when he messed in the house ... sometimes saying nothing ... sometimes cuddling the dog ... sometimes locking the dog up for a while. Then, when the dog was an adult and peed in the house, taking the dog out back and shooting him.

There's a bit of truth in that description. Some kids get millions of second chances as a juvenile (oh, you can turn your homework in later ... oh, she's a good kid, we'll let "it" slide this time). Others get no chances and are locked up, where, we know from plenty of criminal justice research, they simply learn better ways to commit crimes and rarely get the chance to become "good, upstanding citizens." Then, suddenly they're introduced to the adult system.

And when I think of the mixed messages we are sending by "bolstering students' self-esteem" by not "allowing" them to fail ... and the suspension of a ten year old for not realizing that the blade from his busted piece of plastic pencil sharpener was an "illegal" blade ... I have to wonder what the hell it is we're doing to these kids.

Of course I don't want any kids thinking it's a good thing to bring razor blades to school. But you have to treat these things according to the particular situation. It's subjective, not an absolute, computer driven if/then proposition.

Life is NOT an if/then proposition. It's messy. It is often unfair and I don't think that we ever get it completely, totally, consistently right.

But we have to keep trying, keep thinking of ways to improve upon what we have.

Frankly, a ten-year-old boy who has never been in trouble before and who bursts into tears when the gravity of his situation is suddenly slammed home is probably not a kid who needs suspension and counseling. He bears further watching by the teachers - let's make sure this isn't an early start to a pattern of trying to slip things past the rules. Make him write a paper on what he did wrong and what he should have done.

If we're talking a ten-year-old who often opposes the teachers, who defies authority, who has been known to be aggressive or angry (as a pattern, not as an occasional situation) to her peers ... well, then we need some kind of intervention.

We have a serious problem in our schools across the United States. Too lax in some areas, rules too rigid in others ... I'm afraid the mixed messages we're sending these kids are going to haunt us for generations to come as they realize that deadlines do matter, that all actions have some kind of consequences ... and as they become angry with us for not giving them chances when they needed them and for being too lax when they needed structure.

Our teachers are too overworked, too pressured, to make the difference that so many of them thought they would make. Low pay, long hours and too many hassles with school officials who are too concerned about schools looking good so the district can score more federal funds ... administrators who have forgotten what it's like to sit in the classroom and don't connect with the children in their schools ... schools so large that children slip through the cracks like water through a sieve.

Really, it's amazing that we have any people who stick with teaching for more than a couple of years. I mean, we tell them that the work they are doing is the most important work - and yet we pay them one of the lowest professional salaries (same as with cops and firefighters). Then, we give the power to the parents and the students and distrust "them there ivory tower teacher types" when they dare to exert their professional opinions.

Is it any wonder some teachers would like to drug our kids into submission? Is it any wonder they prefer to develop absolute rules and zero tolerance policies so they can try to cram as many through the system as possible and still escape with some shred of energy for themselves?

Yeah. I gotta wonder. What messages are we sending our children?

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:11 AM | Comments (3) | Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

August 15, 2008

Do-Over

Perhaps I am simply too "rules-bound" to comprehend this. Perhaps I am, indeed, now an old fogey, months before my 40th birthday.

Or perhaps the Dallas school system has gone completely and totally insane.

Apparently, deadlines no longer matter. Turning in crappy homework does not matter. Flunking a test doesn't matter.

A run-down of the new policy (from the Dallas Morning News):

• Homework grades should be given only when the grades will "raise a student's average, not lower it."
• Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.
• Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.
• Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make "efforts to assist students in completing the work."

The purported reason? To make grading fair across all of the schools.

Actually, DISD, the result will be utter chaos. Children need rules and boundaries and an explanation of those rules and boundaries. Now, students in Dallas will be getting a mixed message - the teacher says "Your spelling assignment is due Monday morning." But if you forget to do it or to turn it in, that no longer matters.

So, let me get this straight. These kids are going to learn that deadlines are optional. That there is always a reset button on the game of school. That learning new material is optional and on your own time table?

Yes, there is a time for compassion with students. When you have to weigh circumstances - just as a boss might weigh circumstances with an employee. It's hard to make that perfectly "fair" in written rules. After all, those written rules and policies are what have given us zero tolerance policies.

And here's where the seeming contradiction comes in - circumstances always matter. But you can't "legislate" them. A zero tolerance policy for fighting can see a kid who literally fought back to protect himself from serious bodily harm - or perhaps even death - suspended for fighting. The circumstances should matter - and they require discretion, which is, by definition, not completely fair on paper.

Why does Johnny get to turn his paper in three days late? Well, because his parents were in a wreck and in the hospital. The circumstances matter.

But a policy of "take it when they turn it in" is only going to create chaos. Why bother to do your homework Thursday night when all of your favourite TV shows are on? The teacher has to take it on Tuesday (don't wanna do work over the weekend, after all).

And what about the teachers? Most of them are ridiculously over-worked as it is. Now, they have to keep teaching material that they've already covered, continue grading tests and homework as endlessly as the students turn it in.

This is ridiculous.

There are no endless do-overs in life. You occasionally earn one - but it's never a guarantee. There are no rules saying if you screw up at work, you'll get a do-over. Maybe you lose your job and your house. Maybe your boss takes pity on your and gives you another shot. You make a wrong step down into your garage, maybe you scrape your knee, maybe you just get jostled, maybe you break your leg and can't walk for four months.

School teaches us so much more than the lesson plans our teachers prepare, more than the curriculum designed by the school system. It should also teach us about how the world outside of our families work.

Enough with the mollycoddling and concern with self-esteem taken to a harmful level. Train your teachers in the ethics of grading. In the psychology of both failure and self-esteem. Train them to be strong and compassionate, both.

There are no do-overs. What are we teaching these kids?

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:23 AM | Comments (9) | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

June 2, 2008

All I Needed to Know, I Learned from my C-64

I love computers. I have ever since I saw the Commodore-64 in junior high. There was a thrill of discovery for everything we did. I never knew what I would find on one of those 5 1/4" diskettes.

My dad got into computers back in the day of full room, punch card, ridiculous tubes and all. The thought of a tiny little computer at home which could hold a whole 64 KB of memory (and had no hard drive!) was irresistible to him. He and his buddies swapped computer programs, eventually cracking or writing tools for each other to use to beat the copyrights on the few programs they actually purchased.

As a result, we NEVER had the directions to any of the programs we had -- and there was no W3 to go look things up on just yet. So for me, everything about computers involved discovery. Not only did I usually not know what was on a disk, but how to play the game or use the word processor was a process of explorations. I still remember a game called Bugaboo that we never did really figure out beyond making the little guy hop. When I first played the game, I did my usual: hit every key once until I found out the controls for that game. You died a lot trying to brute force your way through the controls of a game like that, but that was all right. It was part of the adventure. And adventure is rarely as much fun with a clear map as without.

Of course, using that method to figure out the word processor was a lot more tedious and involved figuring out how to access the help menu and then lots of tedious handwriting of directions. Then the directions were typed into the computer and then printed out so the whole family could use them. It was kind of a wacky process.

Flash forward to today when I've got a little flash USB drive that holds 64 Megs of info. 64 MBs of info. That little C-64 seems pretty silly to me now. It couldn't do a whole lot. And what it could do it took forever to do.

But I learned to open up a program and start digging around in it. I learned a little bit about how computers think. That little machine was one of the best teachers I ever had.

I think of my students over the nine years that I taught. I moved from teaching in a "traditional" classroom (desk chairs, a podium and chalkboards) to teaching in a net-worked computer classroom. I was the only instructor at Notre Dame to move my writing class into the computer classroom. Why'd I do it?

I watched first-year students struggle so much with their computers. They couldn't figure out how to do automated page numbers. I had one student who didn't know you could tell the word processor to double-space your paper. That student had been manually hitting return at the end of every line and another return to make the paper looked double-spaced. They knew they hit the save button, but they couldn't find the file unless they opened up Word and used the "Recent Files" list. Learning to use the university webmail program to attach a file gave some of them conniptions.

But the Dean of First Year Studies, who has very recently retired, I believe, insisted that "these kids grew up with computers, they don't need a computer class." Never mind the student, who at the height of the 3.5" floppy disk, tried to put his disk in upside down and backwards; never mind the student who picked up her mouse and placed it on the computer screen and wanted to know why the cursor wouldn't move; never mind the graduate student who couldn't find the "My Computer" icon on his plain and nearly empty desktop.

I felt sorry for my students, truth be told. So many of them struggled with their computers and their minimal computer skills. I'd spend a day showing them the basic ins and outs of Word - changing fonts, font size, color, centering, doing page numbers and indents. All sorts of basic word processing skills. I didn't even get into adding pictures or graphs or integrating with Excel. If we had enough time in a semester and they requested it, I'd even show them some rudimentary HTML.

But mostly, I wanted to teach them to play with their computers as much as I wanted them to play with their writing. I wanted them to explore both. I think those who did begin exploring really got something out of the class. Those who thought I was a jerk for trying to do stuff that "so obviously wasn't about writing," well, they didn't get much out of the class. I never stopped trying to reach those kids, though.

Think what we could accomplish if we could just explore and play a little bit more.

Thank goodness for that Commodore-64. Easily the best $500 my Dad ever spent on anything.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:21 AM | Comments (0) | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble

February 2, 2008

Mastermind

As a child, I was constantly re-vamping something. As I underwent the rapid change of elementary schools and landed finally in a school which instead of encouraging me to excel, actually tossed me back quite a bit, I began re-designing the school system. I didn't realize that third graders do not design school systems. It didn't occur to me that I was being presumptuous or precocious. I saw an inefficient system and I wanted to improve it. I walked around for days contemplating various issues from how to decide which classes were tracked, how many tracks to have and how to train the teachers to treat everyone. That last was especially important to me because I had started noticing what damage a teacher could do by choosing the wrong methodology.

Yeah, I know. What third grader does this?

The Mastermind.

You see, when taking the Meyers-Briggs personality questionnaire, I come out as an INTJ. Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging.

People like me tend to build systems, to look for inefficiencies and fix them. And to a third grader forced to re-do 6-8 weeks worth of work upon arrival at the new school, the entire issue of public education seemed highly inefficient. And since this particular move from Austin to Arlington involved not just a movement within the area ... but a larger move ... it occurred to me that there was no national school system. Just lots and lots of little school systems.

So how in the bleeding hell could there be any standards across the United States? There weren't even visible standards going from Austin to Arlington.

Obviously, this is an inefficient way to educate our youth and build a nation.

Of course, I was the one to do this.

No wonder the teachers at my new school were at a loss regarding how to handle me. Since the INTJ personality type is found in just 1-2% of the population and tends to have far more males than females in its category, they were at a loss as to just how to get this "hysterical female child" who was pretty close to emotionless as well as quite serious and logical to shut up so they could get on with their jobs.

I considered going to the principal to discuss the issue, however, during the new student orientation, I had already decided that our principal did not understand that children are real, reasoning beings. She had that saccharine smile and was so quick to look away from child to the important adults. Marina Margaret Heiss says that INTJs tend to look at anyone who is "'slacking,' including superiors, [with dis]respect -- and will generally [make them] aware of this." I had learned by the age of ten that letting it be too obvious that I disapproved of lax or illogical behaviours (which I defined, of course, as behaviour not following my system of logic, which was, of course, the RIGHT system ... after all, I had honed it to an art form) ... I had learned that letting my opinion about such wrong logic or lax attitude was rather dangerous to my well-being and peace of mind. So, instead of talking to the principal for whom I had no respect, I began asking my teachers why they set up their classes in the way they did.

I rarely got a straight answer.

So, I began developing my own rules. In fact, by fifth grade, when I read Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, I was utterly enthralled with the character of Professor LaPaz who stated:

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

I drove teachers batty ... I hated being in trouble ... I was a good kid ... and yet, there were times when they would watch as I deliberately disregarded a rule, cooly, calmly and whilst looking them straight in the eyes.

There was the instance of the substitute teacher in fourth grade. I needed to pee during math class. The substitute decided I was simply going to cause a disruption or that I was going to wreak havoc instead of going to the restroom. She told me that I absolutely could not leave. First, I hated it when any adult "decided" that "all children are X way." What an illogical system of belief!

Secondly, the deal is ... if I actually admitted to a teacher that I needed to go ... I was at least 10 minutes into the wriggling dance which means if I don't go soon, I'm going to burst my bladder or pee all over my desk. I absolutely HATED having to ASK to go to the bathroom. I wriggled and debated. I asked again. The substitute got angry and lectured the class.

I got up and walked out whilst she was distracted a moment later. I had to PEEEEEEEEEEEE, dammit.

Since our school was always in a state of utter chaos, with some 200 children in my grade level all in one huge "room" ... this was not quite the feat of stealth you might otherwise think. I went to the bathroom and then waited until one of the teachers rang the bell indicating it was time to change class areas. I waltzed back in, gathered my stuff, ignored her and went to my next class as if nothing had happened. I then, on the advice (okay, the insane egging on) of my friends, proceeded to write an "anonymous" note to the substitute telling her how evil she was and how behaviour like that was exactly how she was going to wind up "with dark puddles in the classroom."

Apparently, my regular teacher informed me upon her return, I made the substitute cry with that note. Not that I saw. She just looked pissed off to me. Which I thought was far better than pissed on, which was another option I had considered (actually, I thought about peeing in her desk chair ... meh, close enough). And the thing is, I didn't do this out of meanness to her ... but so that she would learn. Even considering peeing in her chair, I didn't understand this as a vicious act of grossness or vandalism. I thought I was logically teaching her something she needed to learn in order to be a better teacher. When a child claims they have to pee and does "that" wiggle ... you better freaking rush them to the bathroom!!

This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete'

That's from Marina Margaret Heiss again.

I was obviously having issues grasping the social rituals there!!

The thing which perhaps confused my teachers and my family the most ... that confuses my friends today ... is that an INTJ tends to define success for themselves. We don't necessarily define it the way others expect.

I was a smart kid. I could work incessantly on some projects and pay attention to the smallest details - my system building tendencies at work. Worksheets and tests, I would race through, doing less than a stellar job and getting tagged as "not living up to full potential." I got high enough grades to keep almost everyone off my back or at least keep their displeasure to a level of background noise I could live with. The more astute teachers knew I was hitting that minimum just to shut them up and it either drove them nuts, or they docked me points just to make me work harder ... and a few special ones left me alone because my grades were my choice (of course, some didn't give a crap, either).

All of this has led to complications in my adult life, of course. The novel I completed for my master's degree remains in a drawer. I've never sent it out to be published. Most of you find that mad, don't you? All that work to create a world and write some 300 pages ... and do nothing with it? What was the point?

Eh, while a great many unpublished writers claim that they do not write for publication, most of them do at least have publication as a serious goal. I mean it. I wrote it for me. I enjoy having people read it ... but ...

My goal was to write the book. It was publishable when I finished it in 1996. At least, it was comparable quality and theme to other science-fiction books being published at the time. Today, I've seen other writers hit some of my same ideas. It doesn't anger me. It makes me smile. I was right on target. If I were to bother attempting to send it out today, I'd need to do some updating. It wouldn't be all that hard. But I don't do it.

Why? Largely because you need a one page summary of your novel to send out with the first three chapters and your cover letter - whether to agent or to publisher - provided either actually accept "over the transom" manuscripts. It's a process in which your work often gets rejected unread.

And, I find marketing myself difficult. I can market for products, for other people ... and I do a damn good job at it. But myself? Not so much. I want to fan out some of my work and let my work speak for me. I shouldn't need to do anything else. So trying to summarize my 300 page novel into a single page ... writing a cover letter for a job ... these are impossible tasks for me. Insurmountable problems. Social rituals that I do not comprehend and yet am forced to attempt to fake my way through.

From Personality Zone:

Masterminds are rare, comprising no more than, say, one percent of the population, and they are rarely encountered outside their office, factory, school, or laboratory. Although they are highly capable leaders, Masterminds are not at all eager to take command, preferring to stay in the background until others demonstrate their inability to lead. Once they take charge, however, they are thoroughgoing pragmatists. Masterminds are certain that efficiency is indispensable in a well-run organization, and if they encounter inefficiency-any waste of human and material resources-they are quick to realign operations and reassign personnel. Masterminds do not feel bound by established rules and procedures, and traditional authority does not impress them, nor do slogans or catchwords. Only ideas that make sense to them are adopted; those that don't, aren't, no matter who thought of them.

My partner, indeed, most people who know me well, wind up guffawing when they read that paragraph describing the INTJ ... it's so very much the distilled essence of me.

I enjoy being an INTJ and couldn't imagine being any other way. I'm quite comfortable with myself. However, I constantly seek to minimize certain INTJ tendencies ... I constantly grapple with how to market myself ... with trying to be a bit more outgoing instead of so intensely focused on whatever my goal is. (As Heiss says, "Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause to an INFJ" ... and that can sometimes be quite off-putting to other people!)

And here's the real deal ... whilst I have a tendency to refuse categorization (I hate About Me boxes, for instance and mine universally say little about me except that I hate the damn things) ... this one category of INTJ does tend to "hold" most of my traits. But like any category, it describes an aspect or a trend and does not contain me.

So while I am an INTJ and proud of it ... I am myself as well. I am not constrained and defined by my personality type any more than other people are truly defined by theirs. I use that box as a jumping off point to understand why I act the way that I do and how I can improve my relations with others. I do not use it to limit myself but to improve myself.

And that, I suppose is why I hate About Me boxes. They don't serve to improve me, but to encapsulate me ... a distilled short form of me to feed to other people.

As with marketing myself in general, I prefer to fan out a selection of my work and let that speak for me instead.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:44 AM | Comments (9) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Why Johnny Won't Learn and Mrs. Curnutt Is Tired of the System | Stumble