The Relative Size of Fish, Ponds, and Failures

A lot of people who come to Princeton, or at the very least a lot of the people I know at Princeton (this may be more prevalent amongst lower-income students of color than in the general population), went to decent-but-not-spectacular or maybe even totally off-the-map public schools. And this gives lots of us the common experience of having been big fish in tiny little ponds. I got used to being "special" at a young age, being pulled out of class starting in kindergarten to go to a program for academically gifted children, and then tracked into academically rigorous Math and English programs in the 4th grade (with those same kids I'd been seeing in the earlier program), and then switched to an entirely "accelerated" program in 7th grade, interacting with "regular" kids only in Gym, Health, Study Hall, and Electives. The other students in my program and I had special privileges, including the fact that we simply didn't get into trouble. We were kind of untouchable, especially in high school, unless we did something REALLLLLLLY BAD. We were "the AP kids". 

And I got used to being praised at school REAL FAST, especially since at home my ex-stepfather's philosophy was "why should I reward you for doing what you're supposed to do?". It was easy to believe there was something special about me, when you pulled me out of class and gave me different teachers so that I wouldn't be contaminated by the commoners or whatever the fuck you thought would happen to me. And we students of the academically rigorous programs were encouraged to develop our other abilities, so all of a sudden we comprised a large number of the athletes, the band geeks, the artists, etc. In the 8th grade I had a solo in the band concert, a bowl that was traveling around at a state-wide college art fair, and had the highest academic average so got to give a speech at Graduation and be in the newspaper. You couldn't tell me I wasn't the shit (at school). School and everything that school embodied was where I shined.

In fact, during my self-deprecating high school years when I tried to tell myself I wasn't the shit, I consistently had teachers tell me my dreams weren't high enough, or that I could do more. I'm sure it's just teachers' jobs to encourage students and whatnot, but every single time I take a step back and look at my life, I want to thank Chris Hall for basically laughing at the small liberal arts schools I was looking at and telling me I was Ivy League material. I don't know if I ever would have considered it without him. He was the same man who, after hearing my poetry for the first time, told me I'd end up in Hollywood one day. 

Basically, the point I'm trying to get to here is that for the 13 years of my primary and secondary educations, it was incredibly rare for me to hear that I wasn't good at something. "You could do better," were not words that taunted me (while I was at school), though what was praised by my teachers was often found lacking by my mother. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," was a refrain I'd heard often as a small child, but one which I never really got to put into practice as a teenager, because not succeeding was unknown to me. 

All of this was to say that if there was anything I was unprepared for when I came to Princeton, or even just to the world outside of my hometown, I guess, was being average. Maybe even below average in some instances, depending on the skill sets we're talking about. It wasn't until I came to Princeton Preview and saw what my Astrophysics-major host was like that I realized that being good at something in the context of my high school didn't mean I'd be good at it here, and I had never been bad at anything (but sports, I guess) before. But I could rationalize that and remember that I was at the then-number-one institution in the country and there were bound to be people here that were better than me at some things, and math/science wasn't my strong suit anyway.

I was vastly more underprepared for my writing to be criticized. I had always been the person whose writing was held up as an example for other people to follow in class. My only 5s on AP tests were in English Language and English Literature, my Verbal and Writing sections were higher than my Math section on my SAT, and my high 700s subject test in English Language was one of my biggest accomplishments. Writing was my thing, and no one had ever had anything bad to say about it before. So Writing Seminar basically destroyed my academic self confidence (though I only got at B on my first paper), and that was when it hit me that suddenly I was a small fish in a fucking ocean. 

To this day, I really don't handle making mistakes well. I am a planner by nature, and every time something deviates from my plan, I freak the fuck out. When I failed a test in Psych 101 and wound up with the lowest grade I'd ever had in all my years of schooling and my mom didn't find out and the world kept right on moving, I learned that I can fuck shit up from time to time and not die. But I also quit some of the clubs I was involved in and buckled down academically and got straight As and A-s the next semester, so how bout them apples, Princeton University? I saw my failure as a problem and attacked it with a plan. It is still ingrained into every fiber of my being that failure is something to be avoided. 

And all of this is why this article I read today resonated with me so well, but also scared the shit out of me. "Why Success Always Starts with Failure" featured an interview with the author of a new book about adaptation and why failure is necessary for growth and success.

The three ways most of us handle failures are very, very bad at teaching us to adapt:

"Denial. "It seems to be the hardest thing in the world to admit we've made a mistake and try to put it right. It requires you to challenge a status quo of your own making."

Chasing your losses. We're so anxious not to "draw a line under a decision we regret" that we end up causing still more damage while trying to erase it. For example, poker players who've just lost some money are primed to make riskier bets than they'd normally take, in a hasty attempt to win the lost money back and "erase" the mistake.

Hedonic editing. When we engage in "hedonic editing," we try to convince ourselves that the mistake doesn't matter, bundling our losses with our gains or finding some way to reinterpret our failures as successes." [I'm so guilty of this one. Rather than call something I did a mistake, I try to focus on what I learned from it and convince myself it was worth having done. I may have learned a lot from it, and it may have been worth doing, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't still regard it as a mistake--that will help me get out of this fear of fucking up.]

 We have to learn to fail productively, which reminds me of a line I heard somewhere a long time ago, that someone "tries to fail a little bit better every day."

"Try new things. "Expose yourself to lots of different ideas and try lots of different approaches, on the grounds that failure is common." [New things intimidate me because I might not be good at them or might not like them, or might generally be made to look like a bumbling idiot because of them. (I'm hard on myself sometimes.)]

Experiment where failure is survivable. "Look for experimental approaches where there's lots to learn - projects with small downsides but bigger upsides. Too often we take on projects where the cost of failure is prohibitive, and just hope for the best."

Recognize when you haven't succeeded. "The third principle is the easiest to state and the hardest to stick to: know when you've failed.""

*audible gulp* And how exactly are we supposed to do that?

Gather feedback. "Above all, feedback is essential for determining which experiments have succeeded and which have failed. Get advice, not just from one person, but from several." Some professions have build-in feedback: reviews if you're in the arts, sales and analytics if you release a web product, comments if you're a blogger. If the feedback is harsh, be objective, "take the venom out," and dig out the real advice.

Remove emotions from the equation. "It's important to be dispassionate: forget whether you're ahead or behind, and try to look at the likely costs and benefits of continuing from when you are."

Don't get too attached to your plan. "There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg)." [THIS. RIGHT. HERE. is exactly what happens to me when one of my plans fail. It's like, total system failure and I stop being a functional human being because all of my plans just went out the fucking window and I don't know what to do.]

He says we need to create "safe spaces to fail." Places where we can mess up and the world won't end.

Practice disciplined pluralism. Markets work by this process, encouraging the exploration of many new ideas as well as the ruthless weeding out of the ones that fall short. "Pluralism works because life is not worth living without new experiences." Try a lot of things, and commit only to what's working.

Finding "a safe space to fail is a state of mind." Assuming that you don't operate a nuclear power plant for a living, you can probably infuse a bit more freedom and flexibility into your workday. Give yourself permission to test out a few off-the-wall ideas mixed in with the by-the-book ideas.

Imitate the college experience. "College is an amazing safe space to fail. We are experimenting with new friends, a new city, new hobbies and new ideas - and we'll often mess up academically and socially as a result. But we know that as long as we don't screw up too dramatically, we'll finish college, graduate, and move on - that mix of risk and safety is intoxicating. Yet somehow as we grow older we lose it." [This is one I have no problem with, haha.] 

All in all, this sounds like it might be the next self-help book on my reading list, because being afraid to fuck things up is something I really need to work on. 

 

...Shit.

Reblogged from Treasured Tresses

Reblogged from Indie. Radiant.

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 22--Letter to a Feeling You Wish You Didn't Feel

Dear

Also reblogged from my friend L

I'm not suffering from you right now, but you come in and out of my life so regularly that as soon as I saw L's post, I knew today's letter had to be to you, because you are never a welcome presence in my life. It comforts me only slightly that I understand exactly where you come from:

Back when Amy Chau's memoir was released, lots of my Asian and non-Asian friends started joking around about whether their parents were Tigers (and not in the legacy-student sense of the word). These students, who for the most part play instruments, got amazing grades throughout their primary and secondary educations, and now go to one of the top universities in the world found it easy to joke about the effectiveness or benefits of Tiger-Motherhood, regardless of whether their own parents had been Tigers. My own mother was only a Tiger certain ways--appearances were everything, and one's hair had to be straight, neatly arranged, and one's clothes had to be ironed if one were going to go anywhere with her--most notoriously in terms of her standards for my academic success; I had to beg and plead for extra-curricular development, rather than be forced to practice my instrument for hours on end. All that open communication and "talking" rather than authoritative discipline that Annette Laureau talks about with wealthy parents' style of raising their children...yeah you can tell we were poor, because her word was law and the only appropriate response was "Yes ma'am Mom".  Praise was not common in my house--in my ex-stepfather's words: "Why should I reward you for acting like you're supposed to?"

Straight A's were mandatory in my household for me according to my mother's rules from the very beginning. I didn't really even have to work at this until sixth grade math; Mrs. Franks hated us and constantly reminded us that we were idiots in comparison to the accelerated math class from the year before (don'tcha just love people who shouldn't be around children in their formative years and choose to become teachers?). I came home with my first ever B, and my mother was furious. I tried to explain that the class was hard, and I couldn't be perfect, and my then-stepfather beat me mercilessly. Buckle end of the belt. My failure (because anything less than perfection was failure) was unacceptable and would not be tolerated in this house. I would be perfect, or I would be punished. End of story.

When my mother and the abusive asshole finally separated for the last time, when I was in the 7th grade, I thought the worst of it was over. I was taller than my mom by that age, and though I had no doubt she could still beat me, I doubted that she would. And I was right: psychological torture was her weapon of choice.

Example A) My school district sent home interim report cards about halfway through each marking period, designed to let you and your parents know how you were doing in your classes so that improvements could be made if necessary before final grades came out. In the second marking period of the year when I was in 7th grade, my interim report card came home showing that I had a B in Art, with As in all my other classes. The comments said that I had incomplete work, which was not untrue--we had been working on an Indian-henna-practices-inspired scratch art piece, and in the vein of true Indian henna, my work was ornate and complex. It took considerably more time than my classmates' flowers and simple patterns, and I wasn't done yet, but wasn't going to compromise my project to finish on time; you can't rush art. [The piece later went on to be featured in the County Art Fair #I'mjustsayin] This explanation didn't come close to being acceptable to my mother though; she grounded me, said I was not going to perform in the band's Winter Concert which I had a 12-measure solo in, and took away my TV, computer privileges, books, and library card. I had to go in to school the next day and explain this to my band director, while I was sobbing and so ashamed that I couldn't look him in the eye. He told me he'd suspected things were bad at home, but never anything like this. He took it upon himself to speak with my art teacher, who reluctantly allowed me to take home the tools I needed to finish my project and then wrote a note to my mother saying that my grade was an A, which my mother reluctantly accepted and let me be in the concert.

Example B: 8th grade. My school had become so overcrowded that some genius (read: idiot) administrator decided to implement a one-way-hallway policy designed to facilitate faster commutes from one classroom to another between bells. Students caught going the wrong way in a one-way hallway were subject to detention. One day, I left my sneakers in the locker room after gym. I realized this as I was halfway down the one-way hallway on my way to Health class, and tried to turn around and go back, but a teacher yelled at me. I told him what had happened and he said to go to class and ask my Health teacher for a pass to go to the gym. I went to class and the Health teacher said I had to wait to the end of the period, and then he would write me a pass explaining why I would be late to my next class. Needless to say, by the end of that period, my sneakers were nowhere to be found. I went home and explained what had happened to my mother, and said I needed new sneakers--I'd only owned one pair. She told me I should have been more responsible, and that she wasn't going to buy me new sneakers. So, every day for the rest of the marking period, I was unprepared for gym class. I tried to participate when I could, but usually my teacher made me sit on the bleachers because I didn't have the right shoes. And come the end of the marking period, I got a C in gym, with the comments stating that I was unprepared. My mother screams at me for hours, grounds me for the entire next marking period (about 10 weeks), again stripping my room of everything but a bed and a dresser and taking away my computer and library privileges. I wasn't allowed to celebrate my 14th birthday--no cake, no party, no gifts. But at least she bought me a goddamn pair of sneakers.

Example C) Freshman year of high school, Geometry. Barely squeaked by with a 91, the lowest grade in the A-range. She told me it was unacceptable. Confused, I said, "But mom, it's an A. Look at the scale!" She said it wasn't a high enough A.

Example D) My senior year of high school, once I was already accepted to Princeton and had decided the rest of my high school career was meaningless, I wasn't doing too well in AP Calc II. I may have had a C at the interim-reporting time. My friends lamented having gotten their interims, and I was legitimately afraid to go home because I didn't know what my mother would do to me. I'd never had that kind of grade in an academic class before. I rummaged around the house until I found a spare mailbox key, prayed to a God I didn't believe in, and thanked my lucky stars when I found that she hadn't checked the mail the day before because my interim was still in the box. I very sneakily removed it, left everything else undisturbed, and destroyed all evidence of its existence. She never asked about it. I'll never tell.

One of the reasons Remember the Titans is one of my favorite movies (besides Denzel) is that the team overcomes every possible obstacle to actually achieve the supposed-to-be-impossible requirement of perfection. They gave me hope that even in the darkest moments, even when I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't, even when I wanted to run away or give in to her threats to send me to live with my father, I could take it. WILL. YOU. EVER. QUIT????? NO. WE WANT SOME MORE. WE WANT SOME MORE. WE WANT SOME MORE!!!!!! It was probably somewhere around this time of my life that I silently declared war against my mother. The time for trying to reason with her had long since passed, so I put my game face on and said Bring it, bitch. Every impossible standard she threw at me, I worked my ass off to reach. It damn near killed me, but I did it. I shattered everyone's expectations...even her own, I think. I hated her for it, every day for so many years of my life I hated her for it...but look where it got me. I can't say it didn't work.

And now, as I keep saying, I am a grown-ass woman. My mother no longer has that kind of control over me--I made sure of this as I worked to change the tone of our relationship once I went to college. She tried to give me shit about having a B in Spanish my first semester, and I made it clear that I wasn't having it. I guess having an above-average GPA at the (then-) number one institution in the country was enough for her, because the battles ceased. 

At least, the ones with her did. The problem with being exposed to something so regularly for such a prolonged period of time, however, is that you unconsciously begin to internalize it. I have different standards than those she demanded that I meet, but I still hold myself to them as rigorously as she made me. I am still disappointed by B+s. I still over-involve myself and then drive myself damn-near-crazy trying to give my all to every single commitment I have. I still can't do anything halfway. I still can't leave my room/house for the day without checking the mirror. I don't like to call myself a control freak, but I panic when something happens in my life that I have no power over. Every time I stumble or misstep walking down this crazy path called life, I become an emotional wreck. My tiniest mistakes are blown into epic proportions in my head, and instead of looking at an obstacle and instantly thinking up ways to turn it into a stepping stone, I sit and cry and feel like my entire world has come crashing down around me. Every time something goes wrong, even something that I had no control over, you completely overtake me and leave me a crumbled tear-stained mess on a floor or in my bed. I always fall back on you, instantly looking for ways to blame myself, always wondering what's wrong with me that caused this to happen. A mistake temporarily ends me. It's so easy for me to ignore all my accomplishments and feel like a total and complete failure when something goes wrong, because though I'm now sure she didn't mean to, she made me feel like a collection of mistakes, rather than a human being who is allowed to err. I don't know how to limit myself, which is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. I cannot wage war against myself as I waged war against my mother, because my goal is to love me in every way that I can. That means getting her, and the way she presumably DOESN'T EVEN FEEL ANYMORE (and probably never felt), out of my head. 

These are self-affirmations:

I am allowed to make mistakes. I cannot learn without them. The world will not end if I have to backtrack a little bit. Not every misstep is a failure. The sun will rise even if I don't have a small success to offer it. The pinnacle of perfection is simply being myself. That is the only end-goal I need.

Take your ass on home, atelophobia. You are not welcome here.

Respectfully not yours,

Maya