This is big. It really confirms my rather shameful belief that my own mediocrity and lack of extrinsic achievements were really a product of my own self-sabatoge. I was always hard on myself when I couldn't do something difficult, eventually giving up and rationalizing that I simple had no "talent" or "natural ability" to do it - like A Level maths and wakeboarding.
I recall my parents telling me that I was "smart" and "clever" enough to ace my exams, be the first in my class (and even the whole school) and expecting no less than perfect or near-perfect grades until I was in secondary school. Yet I also recall my mother berating me for not "trying hard enough", not being "careful enough" whenever I didn't get 100% - the same kinds of phrases the researchers say are usually used on underperforming boys. So I grew up with both environmental signals -- the first, that I was innately smart, the second, that my good grades were a result of my hard work.
And yet I still became an underperforming (read: average) student in secondary school and gave up on the several challenges I never overcame - like Organic Chemistry (I rationalised that I had "no talent for science") and in-line skating ("no interest"). Later on, I applied the same defeatist ideology to graduate statistics and wakeboarding. I can remember the exact moments during each undertaking where I decided mentally that I would not bother to persevere, choosing failure as the path of least resistance.
However, my history has not lacked evidence of my overcoming obstacles and succeeding at something as a result of applying sheer willpower to it. Despite receiving almost no encouragement from my parents, I taught myself to ride a bike, (I wrenched up the training wheels of my bike and spent an entire day balancing on it back-and-forth along the 20 metres of my apartment till I could balance), swim the breaststroke (I stayed up nights analysing the strokes and then practising in the pool), play the piano without a teacher (sheer perseverance and practice) and pass my O Level "A" Maths (practicing hundreds of hours).
So on the counts of my apparant failures, were they due to my own defeatist mentality, somehow caused by early childhood or youth experiences of being praised for my "smartness" and less for my personal effort? It's really hard to say now, and impossible to calculate the countless times I received feedback from people the first 18 years of my life. But I do see that I was able to get by rather well and succeed at the things I told myself I had to succeed at when extenuating circumstances drove me to overcome the odds. "Failure is not an option" - the extrinsic stick - worked very well for major exams and things that mattered to me, like my driver's license compared to the intrinsic carrot - the pleasure of mastering something for its own sake.
This has huge implications for me as a parent-to-be. In a way, I am rather relieved to be having a son rather than a daughter, so I do not have to be extra mindful about how I give him feedback as he is growing up. After all, if he is going to inherit Daniel's short attention span, I forsee telling him to "focus and try harder!" a lot more than "that was really clever" and "you're such a smart boy!".
I believe the story is more complex than the single variable of different types of praise we give to boys and girls. Women have to deal with a lot more subtle societal messages as they grow up compared to boys, for example, the need to appear feminine and not as aggressive as men in their pursuit of career success and the obligation to be the primary caregivers to their parents and children, all of which interact with their own innate personality and belief-systems to produce their responses to difficult challenges. Whether we choose to stay the course and persevere at something is also weighed in a cost-benefit analysis of whether the end is worth the means to achieving it.
My decision not to continue with PhD had me soul-searching and questioning my ability to complete it (answer: yes) but I also did a pragmatic comparison of the opportunity cost (too much) against my genuine passion for academic research (not enough) and I came to the decision to give it up. I predicted that what I could achieve in the long-term would not compensate me for what I could achieve without that opportunity cost. I think that decision has paid off and I don't blame or credit my parents or my response to adversity for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment