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There were 182 helpful blog comments after a smart, well-liked college kid, whose blog I follow, reported failing university, big time, repeatedly. None of the comments advised on emotional or mental health, no, not after the first comment was from the girl’s father to discouraged such advice, saying she was getting adequate counselling already. (Here’s the link to Athena Scalzi’s blog)
Instead, besides other advice, most everybody “told their own story.” Just as if in some giant Internet AA meeting. And most everybody told of not having any traditional campus path, no, not even the ones who went on to get Ph.D’s or nice professional lives. Nobody reported a bad life, by the way. I said:
Some thoughts:
A lot of unusual stories above, nothing to feel dumb about. When I took a one year full time certificate program in writing (Not for getting a job!) I found that half of us had left home as minors. I wish I had known that back when I was feeling dumb as a minor off in the big city.
According to visionary Jane Jacobs, (in her last book Dark Ages Ahead) our society has organized so that a “piece of parchment” can be used as a “no cost to the company” screening device. I suspect what it screens for is, as Magpie said, “executive function.”
According to business sage Peter Drucker, some learn by hearing, some learn by reading, and a few, like Sir Winston Churchill, learn by writing. Hence Churchill’s great struggles in school, although he went on to win a Nobel Prize in writing.
I was in the middle of presenting a small group seminar to my classmates in university when someone burst out, “You’re an oral learner! My LD kids talk like you!” (Learning Disability) My boss had already noticed and told me. I hadn’t known.
When I was a campus tour guide there was a remote corner where I would always stop my group and tell them that some of them would change their major before they graduated. Therefore they should pay attention to which classes they liked and which students they hung out with on evenings and weekends.
When my classmates told a professor I was changing majors she said, “Where he belongs!” because she had seen me with other students, and one of them had mentioned me to her.
Moderate socializing is, I believe, important in college because, I read once, half your learning comes from other students. The other half is texts and teachers. …I didn’t do dormitory life, but I did do a shared house which I found enlightening.
“Dorm” is Latin for sleep, hence dormitory, dormant, and why the Mad Hatter’s friend was always so sleepy. (which came to me in the middle of a Latin final exam—when I went down the stairs to hand it in I just had gleefully to whisper this insight to my prof)
Students who are active enough to have “meaning of life” conversations are often active in student life and clubs too, so I think that is where to find them. Others, poor saps, see college as a glorified high school: talking about weather, pro sports and “Just the classroom facts, Ma’am.”
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Meanwhile, several people have told me they will decline to register for a class, will miss out on the entire course, if just once during once during that class they would have to do some public speaking.
I am sure it helps if, when students walk up to the front, folks will clap for them before they even start speaking, or at least, as in the AA show Mom, everyone says “Hello Christie.” Just as if a trio doing Chopin were applauded as they took their seats on the stage. The same day I contributed to Athena’s blog, I contributed to Derek’s where a commenter had been amused to admit something: She had that very day read Derek’s blog post as a way to avoid working on her first speech. (Link to Derek Sivers) I said:
Sean Crawford (2021-08-24) #
I see Paula at #515 is doing her first speech. Hurray! Maybe she’s in Toastmasters International where you meet the nicest people.
I want to say that Toastmasters is terrific for building self confidence, not just for speeches, but for the Zen of “speaking off the cuff.” Spontaneously. Less that half the weekly meeting is for speeches, there is other stuff too, including someone being volunteering a week in advance to tell something funny.
In my city half the meetings are over the lunch hour in office buildings, but I prefer the two hour evening ones, partly because I can socialize during the break. We joke that half of us are engineers (a less verbal profession) In reality, only a third of us are.
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Blog notes:
Obviously, I am still avoiding composing fresh essays. I might compose in October, as I am taking a “Creative Nonfiction” class then. Maybe a September-wide pause is in order.
Luckily, by coincidence, despite two recent Olympic Games posts, I have in recent days had a low hit count. This allows me a low-guilt excuse: Maybe a long-term pause is in order.
I might pause in five days, at the end of August.
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Sean Crawford
City of Camrose
August
2021
