Surviving High School

Mar 11, 2008 20:31

So after this post, I got to thinking more about what was happening with me when I was in high school, and how I reacted differently than other girls in high school.

long, again )

feminism, mathematics, social dynamics

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Comments 11

cakmpls March 11 2008, 12:23:40 UTC
I think you and I have some characteristics and some approaches to life in common.

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aquaeri March 11 2008, 12:50:14 UTC
I'm shocked, shocked I say, at the suggestion.

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lakrids404 March 11 2008, 20:14:00 UTC
Interesting. Out from what (very) little I knew about you. I had build an short imaginary life story about you. I figured out, that out from knowledge that you could write in danish. I imagined that you probably studied at Copenhagen university, but after your candidate degree, you got a Phd in an Australian university, and you that you liked the country, so much that you decided to emigrate.

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aquaeri March 11 2008, 21:26:09 UTC
That's very interesting to hear. I had no idea anyone could get the impression I'd stayed in Denmark that long. I guess particularly because I am in the sciences, I am very aware that I only know the English words for everything, because it's in high school you start learning all that.

If you ever meet me, you'll know for sure your story can't be right. English is my primary language. I get very confused when paperwork asks for my "first" language. Do they mean the first language I spoke, or the language I'm at home in?

Actually, the funniest thing is that I have a bit of trouble (although I'm getting better) understanding Danes speaking English. When a (more typical than me) Dane speaks English, they make sounds that my brain tries to interpret as them speaking Danish. I've got to deliberately switch gears to hear it as English-with-an-accent.

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lakrids404 March 11 2008, 22:30:13 UTC
I would my self be pretty surprised, if I found out that my speculations would have been somewhat correct.
I think that we more or less automatically, tries to create a pattern of the individual, whom we are in contact with. So we can alter our behavior in a way that creates, the "right" response output from the individual, that we are communicating with.

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Contemplatively posting with the 'math' icon ... lilairen March 12 2008, 00:40:01 UTC
I just want to quote something I wrote in my blog a few months ago, about the dichotomous young-teenaged heirarchies:

And my comment over there (still in moderation as of this writing) is:

"I was too smart to ever be pretty. It shapes a lot of things."

It wasn't allowed, you know, for the likes of me to be attractive. I could be either attractive or smart, and smart was something I clearly was before the dichotomous choice came up as a visible fork in the road, so I was off down one branch before I realised I was well past the place I could maybe have decided about it.

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Re: Contemplatively posting with the 'math' icon ... aquaeri March 12 2008, 05:43:12 UTC
I think the "pretty" thing might be more American. I don't remember that ever coming up. I don't think I was particularly pretty, but I wasn't ugly either. I certainly wasn't trying to compete in the style stakes, but again, that wasn't a big thing. We had uniforms, for a start. Now you can evolve complex codes around hem lengths, hair styles etc, but it's only a small number who actually take that seriously enough, it doesn't work as a school-wide hierarchy.

The little bits of goss about me I did hear suggests the rest of the school was quite aware I might be attractive to the geek boys, at least.

I have to say I get the general impression US high school is crueller.

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Re: Contemplatively posting with the 'math' icon ... lilairen March 12 2008, 05:50:36 UTC
Junior high school (age 11-13ish) was worse, for me, but when I got to high school (13-17 for me, and I was a year advanced on my agemates) I went to a school that imported geeks from a wide region, quite deliberately, so as not to be in the company of the same people as in junior high.

In junior high, the "smart means you're not attractive" structure meant that I was an acceptable target for abuse, but not companionship. (Which is most of what that blog entry was about; it was in response to another American writing about the gulf between being perceivable as 'sexy' and as 'intelligent'.)

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Re: Contemplatively posting with the 'math' icon ... aquaeri March 12 2008, 06:43:27 UTC
It sounds really tough.

As for the sexy/intelligent thing: when I was about 24, I was invited to a large party where I knew no-one except the person who invited me, and my ex-boyfriend as of a few months and his new girlfriend. What with all the extra time on my hands, I'd been to a lot of aerobics classes, and I was probably the shapeliest I will ever be in my life

I went out and bought a dress that somehow managed to both look like it was hiding nothing and hide my major figure flaws. I had no trouble getting men to talk to me. And I made a point of talking about my work, which was looking for genes that might be implicated in multiple sclerosis.

I honestly think that gulf is more people's perception than actuality (not saying that perception can't lead to heaps of unpleasantness).

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