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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.)

[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]

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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Mm. Yes-but. Yes, but "also" is definitely the right word. I think parents have an impact on their children's behavior but some of it is outside factors or factors internal to the child him- or herself.

Not that you were implying anything different; I just wanted to clarify because so many parents seem to get so worried about doing every little thing exactly right, as if one tiny slip on their part would doom their children to become horrible people forever.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is the flip side of being convinced that one can make one's child into a musical sensation/Nobel Prize-winning scientist/[occupation of choice here]. It's much less obnoxious, but I still hope to avoid it myself, and also to have my friends avoid it whenever they can.

[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.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I picked my grad schools in large part based on not having to take the GRE. It was one part not wanting the stress (time-limited standardized tests give me the heebie-jeebies, no matter how well I do on them), and one part "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." After highschool performance on standardized test results that would sound like bragging, followed by a college performance in research that would sound like bragging, followed by a real-life job performance that would sound like bragging--if someone was going to say to me, that's nice, now sit here for a few hours and fill in some circles, so that we can *really* see if you're qualified...well, I had no polite answer to that. Still don't, really.

[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.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Good ol' whatsherface.

[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.

[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.

[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!