Childhood analyses are surprisingly accurate
Throughout all of elementary and middle school, my teachers complained to my parents about my inability to consistently pay attention, follow directions, and complete assignments. Much of this was fixed when I was placed in gifted classes, as most of the time I wasn't paying attention was due to my being bored out of my mind and reading books under my desk so the teacher wouldn't yell at me. I was really good at tuning people out after the first couple of sentences, since those usually contained everything I needed to know anyway. Who needs extra details? I certainly didn't.
This hasn't changed in the years since; if anything, coming to college only made it worse. I follow conversations around me with immense difficulty, and I constantly have trouble paying attention to my professors and even my textbooks for more than a few minutes, eschewing ridiculous details for the sake of understanding the big picture. At a place like MIT, though, this just doesn't cut it, especially in a memorization/detail-heavy (and as a result premed-heavy) major like Course 9.
I should write my teachers someday and tell them they were right. Who needs psychological evaluations when you can have the comments section of a fourth-grade report card?
Anyway, a habit like this is bound to screw me over soon. (It kind of already is.) I should have learned from the first time it happened, nearly ten years ago.
One of our class assignments in the fifth grade was a presentation on a peacemaker of sorts. The directions were simple enough: pick a peacemaker. Present to the class about their life and what they did with it.
(A few of you may remember this very assignment. If you do, feel free to correct any details I might have screwed up.)
The directions also stated that we were supposed to dress up as the person in our presentation. I managed to conveniently miss that part, leading to my lack of understanding when my friends complained, "but that's hard!" Four of the five girls in our class picked Mother Teresa, as the ideal costume was easily obtained and consisted of a rosary and a sheet wrapped around one's head. (Apparently, this little-effort-required costume - sans rosary - was the same reason a third of the boys chose Mahatma Gandhi.)
I, however, went with Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Anyone who wins a Nobel Peace Prize and gets at least two weeks of third, fourth, and fifth-grade curricula devoted to him must be one hell of a peacemaker, right?)
It wasn't until the day before the presentations that I found out what I'd inadvertently done to myself. Rather than pass myself off as an ultra-progressive nine-year-old refusing to conform to society-imposed limits on what I could do for my project, I panicked and wondered if it was too late to switch to Mother Teresa.
...I have, for good reason, blocked nearly the whole of presentation day from my mind, save for some fleeting images of my classmates swathed in sheets and the words "I died after being shot outside my hotel room on April 4, 1968." I do remember Mrs. BB not looking too pleased, but I'd chalk that up to my presentation skills being for shit.
I haven't accidentally crossdressed since.
This hasn't changed in the years since; if anything, coming to college only made it worse. I follow conversations around me with immense difficulty, and I constantly have trouble paying attention to my professors and even my textbooks for more than a few minutes, eschewing ridiculous details for the sake of understanding the big picture. At a place like MIT, though, this just doesn't cut it, especially in a memorization/detail-heavy (and as a result premed-heavy) major like Course 9.
I should write my teachers someday and tell them they were right. Who needs psychological evaluations when you can have the comments section of a fourth-grade report card?
Anyway, a habit like this is bound to screw me over soon. (It kind of already is.) I should have learned from the first time it happened, nearly ten years ago.
One of our class assignments in the fifth grade was a presentation on a peacemaker of sorts. The directions were simple enough: pick a peacemaker. Present to the class about their life and what they did with it.
(A few of you may remember this very assignment. If you do, feel free to correct any details I might have screwed up.)
The directions also stated that we were supposed to dress up as the person in our presentation. I managed to conveniently miss that part, leading to my lack of understanding when my friends complained, "but that's hard!" Four of the five girls in our class picked Mother Teresa, as the ideal costume was easily obtained and consisted of a rosary and a sheet wrapped around one's head. (Apparently, this little-effort-required costume - sans rosary - was the same reason a third of the boys chose Mahatma Gandhi.)
I, however, went with Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Anyone who wins a Nobel Peace Prize and gets at least two weeks of third, fourth, and fifth-grade curricula devoted to him must be one hell of a peacemaker, right?)
It wasn't until the day before the presentations that I found out what I'd inadvertently done to myself. Rather than pass myself off as an ultra-progressive nine-year-old refusing to conform to society-imposed limits on what I could do for my project, I panicked and wondered if it was too late to switch to Mother Teresa.
...I have, for good reason, blocked nearly the whole of presentation day from my mind, save for some fleeting images of my classmates swathed in sheets and the words "I died after being shot outside my hotel room on April 4, 1968." I do remember Mrs. BB not looking too pleased, but I'd chalk that up to my presentation skills being for shit.
I haven't accidentally crossdressed since.