Picked Last for Gym

[mrissa]

cakmpls and writingortyping got me thinking, and what started out a comment got long, so it got moved over here instead. cakmpls was talking about sharing or not sharing one's SAT scores as an adult, and writingortyping was talking about being picked last in gym class (over on her non-lj blog).

The only important thing to me about my score on the SAT was that I wanted to beat my dad's score. Most of the schools in the Midwest accept ACT scores, and I think at least one of the ones I applied to required them. I didn't have a "competition" with anyone at my school -- we just weren't really like that -- and with the SAT I could compete with my dad. They hadn't done the major recentering of the test yet, but I still wonder about the drift from the time he took it until the time I did. I'm very good at standardized tests. I'm also very good at recognizing how very little they mean, so I can definitely sympathize with cakmpls's general policy of not sharing. It's a lot harder when you have a very high score, because if you say you had some average score, fewer people would mistake a point of data for a point of pride. (If you say you learned to read in kindergarten or first grade, nobody takes it as anything but a data point, but I had to wonder about commenting that I'd learned to read at 2 in one of yesterday's posts. I don't think it makes me a better or smarter person than someone who learned to read much later, but I've learned to worry about people seeing things that way.)

writingortyping said that something like 80% of people she knows claim to be the kid who was always picked last in gym, and that certainly not everybody could have been picked last. I opined that it was something like bragging about high school class rank or SAT scores: if you went around saying, "I was always picked first in gym in high school," it's a pretty lame boast. It makes it sound like you still think high school gym is important to your life. As much as high school jocks get petted and praised in our culture, washed-up ex-high school jocks are not similarly respected -- at least, not in any circle I've ever been in or seen. I've heard people say things like, "I was the captain of my high school football team," merely offering a point of information, not bragging, and get responses like, "Goody for you." So if I had been picked first all the time, I'd probably keep my mouth shut about it.

(I was not picked dead last, usually. I was never picked first, but I was also not generally enough of a disaster to be the last person picked. Ralston High had much bigger disasters than me. I've never liked team sports, unless you count floor hockey, which rocks because you get to hit people with sticks. I am much better at things I can be bothered to pay attention to, especially with the elbowing-and-checking component, but no one paid enough attention to notice that I was much better at it than I was at other sports, so I didn't get picked any sooner.)

I'm extremely ambivalent about things that are "very good for your age." Age-appropriateness was often used as a bludgeoning weapon when I was a kid: what you are doing right now is very good for your age, so don't you dare try to do more or better. What you're doing now is very good for your age, so I don't have to treat you with any respect, just a patronizing tolerance. One of my friends was once explaining that one of the problems with only children* is that we end up with no sense of age-appropriateness, that we want to be able to do everything just plain well rather than well for one of the kids. I hope she has given up on getting me to see this as a bad thing. When I was saying this to someone close to me recently, he told me, "mrissas are not age-appropriate," and it is perfectly true. I don't see the point to wanting to be a good writer for a 26-year-old, any more than I want to be a good writer for a girl or anything else obnoxious like that. I just want to be a good writer. I don't see why this should have been less true 10 or 20 years ago. I was still a writer then -- more fundamentally than I was a 6-year-old or a 16-year-old, I think, because I'm still a writer and have stopped being those other things.

On the other hand, Roo's current inability to play toccatas and fugues does not indicate that the kid is not very musical. Sometimes age-appropriateness really is, well, appropriate. Doing well in sports in high school is a good thing for people that age who value athletics. Doing well on the SAT is a good thing for people that age who value vocabulary and other similar test elements. I would never scorn Robin's crookedly drawn letters ("Is -- izzat an I?") because they weren't mechaieh's calligraphy. It's a balance, I guess. It's about timing and perspective.

*I have never once tried to explain to her the problems with people with siblings, but she has explained to me the problems with only children on more than one occasion. It's charming.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

It's a lot harder when you have a very high score, because if you say you had some average score, fewer people would mistake a point of data for a point of pride. (If you say you learned to read in kindergarten or first grade, nobody takes it as anything but a data point, but I had to wonder about commenting that I'd learned to read at 2 in one of yesterday's posts. I don't think it makes me a better or smarter person than someone who learned to read much later, but I've learned to worry about people seeing things that way.)

Oh, yes. Exactly.

I don't know when I learned to read; I can't remember not knowing how. I was, if my mother remembered correctly (in telling me this when I was an adult) 5 when she discovered that I could read. I know that at 6 I was reading the funny papers to my cousin who was the same age, because my cousin remembers it. I suspect that I never let my mother know I could read because I valued the attention (even if it was shared with my brother) of her reading to us.

On the other hand, our older son didn't really "read"--reliably read a few sentences in a row--till the first week of third grade. Then it was like a switch turned on, and within, literally, a week or so he was reading at or above grade level. Yet the same kid could ask us when he was barely 3, of something on TV, "Is this real?" (flying in the face of the theory that children don't recognize that there is a difference between real and make-believe till somewhat older). Today he has gone further in formal education than I ever did. So as far as I can see, the only value of my knowing how to read when I was 5? 4? 3? 2? rather than 8 is that I had that many more years of reading enjoyment--a purely selfish benefit.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

One of the lovely things about learning to read when I was that young is that there was no question that my folks were going to stop reading to their 2-year-old, so they kept reading to me well into grade school, until we ran out of things that seemed like "us together things." (Very special category of books, us together books.)

I had this with physical maturation, too: there was no question of menstruation marking my passage into womanhood, because I was very clearly still a little girl when it started, even though I looked less like a little girl every day. Outsiders treated me differently, but my folks and my grands and my godfather essentially stopped using visual data and just paid attention to my behavior and speech in gauging what I was ready for or not ready for.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

See my comments to ckampls for my thoughts on how little they mean.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I tracked down the meme of which you spoke. I got to the page where you're supposed to type in your SAT score, and I sat for a minute. It literally took me a full minute to remember the score (and I'm not totally convinced that I'm right even now). And I took some sort of pleasure in not having that number in the forefront of my brain.

And yeah, the score is an indication of how well I did on that particular test on that particular day, but not much else.

And there was a time, in middle school, where I was picked near the beginning of the class (top 5, maybe?). For team dodgeball--'cause I could catch.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Somewhat along the same lines: my nightmare last night contained someone from high school whose name I still can't remember. My brain dredged up the face and identified it as a high school person; now that I'm awake, I can verify that this was a real high school person and not something like when you're convinced it's your house but it looks nothing like your actual house. But I don't know her name. Blonde hair. Two eyes, one nose. I'm kind of happy about that.

(She was not the thing that made it a nightmare.)

[pameladean]

Your friend's theory about how people with siblings learn all about the gentle joys age-appropriateness is, shall we say, of less than universal applicability. Just because one's sibling is older doesn't mean one does not yearn terribly to surpass that sibling, and if one does, then there is a special brightness to the surpassing because one isn't supposed to be as good at whatever as somebody OLDER. Small differences in age are given ridiculous significance (since few people adhere precisely to the bell curve anyway) and any deviation in either direction is exaggerated as well. Not to mention the whole bit about how a younger sibling is either lagging behind how the older one did at a similar age or else is so far ahead of how the older one did. Age-appropriateness is not a balm, it's just another way of beating one another over the head. It is flexible and has no concrete meaning, only a meaning relative to how one can score off one's siblings. (I was myself largely free from this kind of interaction because I was the only girl and raised in a time where there was Girl Stuff and Boy Stuff (ick ick ick ick ick), but I had three brothers and most of my friends had lots of siblings.)

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The theory was more that people with siblings have groups of "the kids" and "the grown-ups," so even if you learn to do something at 7 that your 12-year-old sib is doing, they're still both "kid things," and you have the concept of the difference.

I didn't want the concept of the difference. I suspected at the time, and still suspect, that writing books would have gone in the "grown-up things" category, and I didn't see any reason to wait around. (And now the older I get, the more I see people setting the bar later and later for how long people "should" wait to write their first novel so they've "lived enough." So I'm glad I started ignoring them early.)

But yes, small differences in age are given ridiculous significance. And you can see why when you watch the difference between one child at 6 and the same child at 9: she will have progressed immensely. But that doesn't mean that she's at exactly the same spot as all 6-year-olds in all activities/traits, and later as all 9-year-olds. It's very, very silly to make teaching age-based instead of skills-based (and I'm including skills like classroom behavior in that assessment).

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I have never once tried to explain to her the problems with people with siblings, but she has explained to me the problems with only children on more than one occasion. It's charming.

I have so been on the receiving end of these sorts of comments, and they always make me want to laugh. We should make a list (which we'd never actually use, of course because the whole notion is bogus) of Personality Defects Caused by Having Siblings. I'll start with:

1. Lack of manners caused by being raised by one's older sibs instead of a responsible adult.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. Or by being influenced by one's younger sibs. Or something.

I suspect an attachment to fairness is holding me back from contributing here.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

>>I had to wonder about commenting that I'd learned to read at 2 in one of yesterday's posts<<

So did I. I just tell people that I had to get an early start so I could fit in all the books I wanted.

If they're still huffy, I can truthfully point out that my IQ is about 33 points lower now than when I was in 1st grade. :)

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I just tell people that I had to get an early start so I could fit in all the books I wanted.

Like I said above, it's a purely selfish benefit!

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

The problems with siblings depends on the siblings (including the one under discussion) which leads me to believe that the problems with only children depend on the only child in question.

I've been getting a variant of the "good for your age" bit lately when flying. Especially during the early part of my training, the instructors thought it was odd when I'd get frustrated at not being able to do something perfectly. They'd tell me they didn't expect me to be perfect, and I'd answer, But I need to be, for the checkride." Of course, part of that may be that they interpreted swearing at myself as extreme irritation instead of running soundtrack.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The problems with siblings depends on the siblings (including the one under discussion) which leads me to believe that the problems with only children depend on the only child in question.

Just so. Just exactly so.

Also upon the parents in question, I feel pretty sure.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I never took the SAT. I went to a school that did not require them, then transferred to one that did. One of the reasons I have not yet gone to grad school is that I don't want to take the GRE. When and if I go, I plan to avoid it as well. I also have never had the scores to my IQ. I'd rather not know.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you not want to know how you'd do on the GRE, or do you not like the idea of the process of taking it? I could understand either, but I don't know which you mean.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

As far as 80% of people getting picked last for gym, I'd follow that up with, "All the time? Or once, on a day when you were already feeling wildly insecure?" Because I think the bad moments from high school tend to stand out more than the nice ones.

I don't often have the urge to tell people my SAT scores or high school GPA at this point in my life. There are moments--I keep running into people who try to make me feel stupid in order to make themselves feel better about their pathetic little lives, and sometimes it's tempting to say, "I am far more intelligent than you can ever dream of being, and I have *written proof*. Neener neener neener." But, of course, that is beneath me. And people that stupid are never cowed by facts, either.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know...I think that there were people in my gym classes who were consistently picked last, so I'm not sure it's all a perception problem. Of course, I didn't particularly care when they picked me, so that may be the skew on my perception.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

If gym class selection were a draft, I would have been picked early in the second round, as a general rule.

[lexiphanic.livejournal.com]

I ended up being required to take both the SAT and ACT, but long ago learned to not actually mention my scores. I have very purposely avoided anything that would give me an IQ number, as I know it would be more trouble than it's worth.

I am a smart person. I pick things up quickly, I understand complex systems, and I remember things very well. As in your original post, these are facts, not value statements, but they are rarely taken as such by others. I have long been tired of people who are intimidated when I know more than they do about something. It hardly means I know more than them about *everything*. I tend to fall into nearly teacher/student relationships with people, since they seem to believe I think on a higher plane than they do, so I can't really relate to them, but I'm useful for fixing their computer issues or answering their product questions (this often comes up at work, much more so than with actual friends).

I won't even start on the "age level" question, other than to say labeling someone as "above grade level" in one skill seems to often have the efect of stamping that person as "in front" in all areas, which is manifestly untrue. Grr.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Good memory issues are so touchy. You have to figure out how not to make it sound like bragging but also how not to make it sound like a creepy stalker if you remember things that other people don't or don't think they would in your circumstance.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Good grief. I saw the meme, but...do people actually go around asking other people about their SAT scores often enough for this to be a problem? That's silly. Who cares?

Good for your age...I don't get that, too terribly much. Maybe because people apparently assume until told otherwise that I'm older than I am. Which is--odd. Do I look/act older than I am? A guy at work a few weeks ago said something about, "You're closer to thirty than twenty-five, aren't you?"

I said: "..."

My problem with being good-at-something-for-my-age is that--I don't know if people really expected as much of me as it felt like they did. But it sure _felt_ like they did. And I put enough pressure on myself. I don't need their help!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

With your sister you seemed older than you did at WorldCon. And you didn't obviously big-sister her, so it wasn't that. I don't know how that balances out in your daily life.

I put enough pressure on myself without their help, too. It didn't help that they sounded to me like they were giving me applause for being able to tie my shoes. I kept wanting to tell people, "No, just wait, I get cooler than this!"

Not that I intend that to be untrue now. But it's less of an issue now.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

In gym during grade school I got picked sooner than in gym during junior and senior high - I was never picked last, but my interest in physical games waned as I got older and increasingly involved in books and schoolwork.

Before I started school I was more into the running and jumping, climbing and tussling. Once I learned to read I wanted to do that most of the time - though I retained some skill at things like dodgeball (the catching and throwing accurately) and archery.

Do others find it hard to balance their interests in sedentary pursuits like reading/writing/internet/computer games/tv etc with maintaining some minimal level of physical fitness?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think it's hard for people to find time for all the things they want to do and all the things they think they ought to do, regardless of what's in those categories.

We have a recumbent exercise bike -- it's easy on timprov's back (and mine, too), and when I'm not using the free weights on it, it's very easy for me to read while doing it, which means that it registers in my brain as virtuous reading time. Definitely a good thing.

I think one problem comes in when it's an interest vs. an obligation. If you enjoy something like hiking or biking that can have different scenery, or if you like the camaraderie and other people's variables in team sports, or if it's a sensation you directly enjoy, it's probably much easier to find time for that than if you're doing your form of exercise because it's good for you and don't really enjoy it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I hope people (at least, people around here!) wouldn't laugh at you if they heard your SAT scores. There's no call for that kind of behavior.

The thing that gets me about school gym classes is that they so often reinforce notions of who "can" and "can't" do athletic things well, rather than teaching everyone to improve their skills. I wish they would all take a "first, do no harm" oath. And I don't think that involves pretending that everyone has the same skill level -- the opposite, in fact. I just think that actually teaching the kids who don't know a sport, game, or skill is a good idea.

In high school, we got our choice of gym classes, other than swimming. I got Aerobics/Tumbling for one of mine, and it was great, because it was clearly not aimed for people who already knew how to tumble. The gymnastics team did not come into this class expecting to learn anything. So the teacher would show us how to get from not knowing how to do a handstand to knowing how to do a backflip.

Hello

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Mrissa, you have perpetuated (from Cakmpls) and kept the fires lit under an absolutely fascinating thread. I'm Nate Bucklin, a science fiction fan and musician from Minneapolis. Do I know you? (I definitely don't know most of the people out of the above 32 commments -- cakmpls, pameladean and skylarker appear to be the exceptions.) Nothing to add at this point.

Nate

Re: Hello

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, but I know you (or rather, your music -- dd_b played some of it for me, so I made sure to hear you and your lovely wife at Minicon this year). Hi!

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

I used to work with a guy that bragged about his SAT score and that he was a National Merit Scholar. He was in his mid-40's. According to him that meant he was the smartest person in any room with less than 100 people. That was kind of annoying.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And, if true, it meant he did a pretty poor job of picking his social circle.

I try to have the sorts of social circles where you can't generally be certain who is the smartest person in the room. I think it's more fun that way.

I was a National Merit Scholar, too, and I haven't had cause to mention it more than twice in the last decade. I think that's a good thing.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

Smart people are some of the most egotistical people I know. I would recommend that anyone who feels tempted to share their SAT, ACT, IQ or other test scores should ask themselves one question first. And here's the question. Have you ever in your whole life wanted this information from anyone else, and if so, when? It doesn't count if you wanted the information for the purpose of comparing it to your own scores. I have ended friendships for the sole reason that my potential friend-ee felt the need to remind people constantly how smart he/she is.

I'm a smart person. I'll admit it. Always was a smart kid. I enjoy being around *other* smart people when they're not trying to one-up me with their SAT scores or making other subtle references to how intellectually superior they are. Or their children. This is another variant. I'd much rather hear about their exciting work in particle physics or the symphony they just composed. (Funny, though, people who brag about their SAT scores or their mensa memberships never seem to have physics papers and symphonies handy for conversational material...) Being picked last for gym class seems to be another popular way to introduce the topic of how special you are, because in our culture we associate intellectual superiority with physical inferiority. There is no such dichotomy in real life, and some of the smartest people I've ever known are also talented athletes. But nonetheless it's a standard part of the "I'm so smart" mating dance.

For the record, I don't recall being picked last ever when there was any picking to be done--except *maybe* in the company of much older kids.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You would think that studying physics would give people the idea that they are, if not smarter than most people, at least smart in a different direction than most people. You'd think that they could then settle down. But no, some people feel defensive about that, too, and spend a good deal of time justifying that their field is much, much more demanding than any other field. One of my old lab students did this to poor gaaldine, and I didn't even know he was still behaving that way. (I think "I flunked one of your freshman lab reports" is the physics equivalent of "I used to change your diaper," so he certainly didn't pull that crap on me.)

The big problem, I think, is when people think that smart is something you are, and that just sitting around being smart is a good thing independent of even so much as a witty conversation. Show, don't tell, people!

[ellarien]

I didn't have SATs, I had A-levels. I remember the standard fresher greeting ritual: Where are you from? Which department are you in? What A-levels did you get? The last question was generally answered with grade as well as subject info. After the first few weeks of University, it pretty much stopped mattering. I think a big part of my real growing-up was coming to realize that the grades that I'd sweated and prayed for for years didn't say anything truly important about me. It took years, and as I discovered a couple of weeks ago, I'm not yet completely over the need to brandish my PhD when I'm feeling outnumbered by life.