Oh, okay, this is hilarious because I certainly never put "show the teacher I'm smart and am a good student" in the bucket of bragging! Bragging is what you do to other people your own age, like Nellie. :)
Wow, I would not have made the distinction, or, if someone had told me to make the distinction, would not have known where to draw the line. I guess if I was on the playground, there would have been no teacher within hearing distance? But most of these interactions took place in the classroom, where, if you were talking to a teacher, the student was the audience, and vice versa, and usually it was a three-way interaction.
When I stopped making my peers feel bad was also when I stopped prioritizing making sure the teacher had pegged me as the single most engaged and intelligent student of the class.
Eh, I suppose in grad school I started to have student interactions without a teacher around, because we had our grad student study rooms where we hung out, but I was still very much in "announcing my accomplishments at every possible opportunity" mode. I don't think it occurred to me that it had no practical purpose there, it was just how I interacted with people at that point.
also because by mid-elementary school I think it was kind of accepted that everyone knew I was smart
Ah, yeah, you grew up in a small town and stayed there? My mother grew up in a military family and so did I. Not until high school did I have the opportunity to build a reputation like that. (And that was a highly unusual circumstance, due to the fact that my parents had two disabled children so they kept making a case in writing that it would be a hardship to move every other year.) And high school was when the stakes were highest! (Scholarships.) So I definitely did not tone it down then.
I think that in her case she was much more fussy about grades and wanting to know what grades other people had made and comparing them to hers.
Oh HAI other student who was just like me. :P I think the competitive nature of school played a role here; it wasn't enough to be smart, you had to be smart*er*, and smart*est*, and you had to take remedial action if you felt like you were losing ground (if you were me).
In general, though, my high school was extremely a place where we discussed grades and class ranking and everything. It wasn't just me, it was the other students. Sophomore year, the school released class ranking data for the first time. You would go to the front office and ask what your rank was. From talking to other students, I gather like 10 of them had expected to be #1, because they knew they had a 4.0, and they got there and were told they were tied for second. Outrage and shock! Who was this mystery sophomore who was taking classes that would weight your GPA above a 4.0? That was for juniors and seniors! There was much whispering and speculation.
It was Mildred, taking honors junior-level English, math, chemistry, and physics sophomore year. Unprecedented!
After that, "Mildred = future valedictorian" was an equation in everyone's head (and this is where it matters that my brothers were disabled and so we didn't immediately move after sophomore year), and it was much discussed. Junior year, I walked into history class one day, and was met with, "Hey, Mildred! [Guy] is number 2 and he's gunning for your number 1 slot! He's gonna be valedictorian!"
I still think it's hilarious that I knew I was so far ahead that there was no way he was going to catch up, and I went, "Uh huh," and went on taking my materials out of my backpack, without even looking up to see who it was. Later on, based on my knowledge of who was salutatorian and knowing where that guy sat in that classroom, I can deduce it was Erik.
Believe me, though, had I considered him a viable threat, I would have paid attention and started talking smack, which was what they were trying to provoke me to do. I know this because one time, a new girl came from a different school partway through senior year. Rumors were flying that they had even more weighted GPA classes at her school, and so she was going to be valedictorian thanks to having started on a different playing field and being able to transfer her head start at the last minute.
People were agog! There was drama! I was in the front office the same day, arguing that this was an unfair practice! The school needed to weight her grades according to our scale, not her old school's scale! What was her GPA, anyway?
Counselors: "Can't tell you, but look, you have nothing to worry about."
Me: "But what is her GPA??!! This is unfair!!"
*rinse and repeat*
Counselors: "YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT GO AWAY!"
They were right. Eventually she ended up not even placing in the top 5% and getting a full tuition waiver at the U of Arizona; she was ranked 16th, having missed it by one slot. (Notice how this was important enough that I still remember!) I also got a scholarship she had wanted. She also came up to me one day at the end of senior year to say that she was bitter about this, because I wasn't even planning on going to the U of A (I still had hopes for MIT in those days).
Then there was one guy I was kind-of friends with, and he ended up ranking, 7th, I think? Give or take 1. (I used to know this, but it's been 20 years.) He told me that he had originally planned to be valedictorian, but he gave up once I came along, because I was such a juggernaut he had no chance, and if he couldn't be first, what was the point in giving your all?
As for the year ahead of me, because I was taking senior-level classes junior year, one time I overheard the students behind me muttering about how Aubrey was going to be valedictorian, unless Mrs. W. (notoriously strict disciplinarian and harsh grader) screwed him over and gave him a B. Because--shock!--he'd gotten some Bs from her on assignments/exams. The other students, who were mostly in the top 10-20 (class of ~300), but not in the running for valedictorian, sounded outraged at her, because being valedictorian was Serious Business.
So, in a cutthroat environment like this, was there any chance I was not bragging at every possible opportunity? We had a pecking order! Talking smack was the order of the day! Future finances were riding on this!
It's also quite surprising, because these were not people who considered themselves intellectuals. Unlike me, they did not do unassigned reading or talk about intellectual topics or complain because school was too easy or have intellectual ambitions. I was the weird kid because I checked out books from the library and carried them with me and actually *liked* school. They happened to be good at completing the assigned work, but the cutthroat grade competition was for bragging rights and scholarship money for college in Arizona.
They had the same approach my parents did: you go to school and do your best. No one responded to "Mildred is making the best grades because she does unassigned work" with "So if I want to beat her, I should start doing unassigned work." It was all "It will be a cold day in hell when anyone beats Mildred at anything--she actually *likes* this stuff and does it voluntarily!"
But I didn't, because I could see that it wasn't really relevant to the fact that I did, in fact, suck at flute.
Lol, I would not have been able to resist!
she said that she was not going to give an intro chem award either for this reason (which I would easily have won), which my mom pointed out was a rather BS excuse, since her daughter was definitely not in the intro chem class!
Now I am outraged on your behalf!
(I guarantee my mom will remember if Mrs. W didn't. My mom does not forget grudges!)
Ha! I can still remember everyone who didn't give me the awards I had earned and who got them instead and am still disapproving. :P
It just boggles my mind because... don't they want their kids not to go through all the struggles they had to go through? I mean, this was a major motivation of my parents as we were growing up! My parents went through a *lot* and they really did not want their kids to have to do that!
Well, the thing is, they did! They made sure I didn't go through the struggles *they* had had to go through. It was the fact that I was completely different from them that was the problem.
My mom's struggle was with teachers writing her off. So she made sure that didn't happen to me. Her struggle was never being bored at school or wanting to do more than just make good grades. She was dyslexic, school was too hard for her! So if I was having an easier time than her and making better grades than her and was all set to go to college and even get a job someday, what right did I have to complain? I was set up for success by her standards!
The standard for success in our family was "have enough education that you could find a job if you needed to." My mother: "I have some community college credits, so if your dad died, I could find work as a subsitute teacher." And then, "Well, now that we live in Tucson, which is a college town, you need a degree for that, but if he died, I could move us back to a smaller town and get a job. We wouldn't starve."
Also, keep in mind my parents' anxiety disorders. That's key here to understanding their behavior. Me asking for things that they hadn't thought of and didn't know off the tops of their heads how to provide was interpreted as me saying they were inadequate parents, which resulted in them shutting me down and saying I was bad for asking for these things. It did not (by and large) lead to, "Let us find out how to do this thing that no one in our family has ever wanted to do." It was all, "We never wanted to do that! Nobody we know has ever wanted to do that! That is an unreasonable thing to want to do!"
Honestly, they didn't see me as struggling or going through a lot. They saw me as coasting and complaining about it. They specifically told me they didn't need to invest in my education, because my grades proved I was doing fine and would do fine in life without any investment. All the investment of resources went to my siblings, whom they could identify as struggling.
Also, this is how sparing your children from your struggles often played out in my family:
Grandma: *takes band in school* Grandma: *plays the marching drum* Grandma: *is too small and weak to carry the big drum in the parade* Mom: *wants to play the clarinet at school* Grandma: "No! I did not succeed at this and therefore you will not succeed at this." Grandma: *does not sign the paper allowing my mom to play the clarinet* Mom: *later complains to me about how silly this was*
Also Mom: *tries taking an independent study once* Mom: *does not make a good grade* Mildred: *wants to take European history as an independent study junior year* Mom: "No! Independent studies are too hard! You are forbidden." Mildred: *is stressed the entire year keeping her independent study a secret* Mildred: *makes a good grade, obviously :P*
no subject
Wow, I would not have made the distinction, or, if someone had told me to make the distinction, would not have known where to draw the line. I guess if I was on the playground, there would have been no teacher within hearing distance? But most of these interactions took place in the classroom, where, if you were talking to a teacher, the student was the audience, and vice versa, and usually it was a three-way interaction.
When I stopped making my peers feel bad was also when I stopped prioritizing making sure the teacher had pegged me as the single most engaged and intelligent student of the class.
Eh, I suppose in grad school I started to have student interactions without a teacher around, because we had our grad student study rooms where we hung out, but I was still very much in "announcing my accomplishments at every possible opportunity" mode. I don't think it occurred to me that it had no practical purpose there, it was just how I interacted with people at that point.
also because by mid-elementary school I think it was kind of accepted that everyone knew I was smart
Ah, yeah, you grew up in a small town and stayed there? My mother grew up in a military family and so did I. Not until high school did I have the opportunity to build a reputation like that. (And that was a highly unusual circumstance, due to the fact that my parents had two disabled children so they kept making a case in writing that it would be a hardship to move every other year.) And high school was when the stakes were highest! (Scholarships.) So I definitely did not tone it down then.
I think that in her case she was much more fussy about grades and wanting to know what grades other people had made and comparing them to hers.
Oh HAI other student who was just like me. :P I think the competitive nature of school played a role here; it wasn't enough to be smart, you had to be smart*er*, and smart*est*, and you had to take remedial action if you felt like you were losing ground (if you were me).
In general, though, my high school was extremely a place where we discussed grades and class ranking and everything. It wasn't just me, it was the other students. Sophomore year, the school released class ranking data for the first time. You would go to the front office and ask what your rank was. From talking to other students, I gather like 10 of them had expected to be #1, because they knew they had a 4.0, and they got there and were told they were tied for second. Outrage and shock! Who was this mystery sophomore who was taking classes that would weight your GPA above a 4.0? That was for juniors and seniors! There was much whispering and speculation.
It was Mildred, taking honors junior-level English, math, chemistry, and physics sophomore year. Unprecedented!
After that, "Mildred = future valedictorian" was an equation in everyone's head (and this is where it matters that my brothers were disabled and so we didn't immediately move after sophomore year), and it was much discussed. Junior year, I walked into history class one day, and was met with, "Hey, Mildred! [Guy] is number 2 and he's gunning for your number 1 slot! He's gonna be valedictorian!"
I still think it's hilarious that I knew I was so far ahead that there was no way he was going to catch up, and I went, "Uh huh," and went on taking my materials out of my backpack, without even looking up to see who it was. Later on, based on my knowledge of who was salutatorian and knowing where that guy sat in that classroom, I can deduce it was Erik.
Believe me, though, had I considered him a viable threat, I would have paid attention and started talking smack, which was what they were trying to provoke me to do. I know this because one time, a new girl came from a different school partway through senior year. Rumors were flying that they had even more weighted GPA classes at her school, and so she was going to be valedictorian thanks to having started on a different playing field and being able to transfer her head start at the last minute.
People were agog! There was drama! I was in the front office the same day, arguing that this was an unfair practice! The school needed to weight her grades according to our scale, not her old school's scale! What was her GPA, anyway?
Counselors: "Can't tell you, but look, you have nothing to worry about."
Me: "But what is her GPA??!! This is unfair!!"
*rinse and repeat*
Counselors: "YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT GO AWAY!"
They were right. Eventually she ended up not even placing in the top 5% and getting a full tuition waiver at the U of Arizona; she was ranked 16th, having missed it by one slot. (Notice how this was important enough that I still remember!) I also got a scholarship she had wanted. She also came up to me one day at the end of senior year to say that she was bitter about this, because I wasn't even planning on going to the U of A (I still had hopes for MIT in those days).
Then there was one guy I was kind-of friends with, and he ended up ranking, 7th, I think? Give or take 1. (I used to know this, but it's been 20 years.) He told me that he had originally planned to be valedictorian, but he gave up once I came along, because I was such a juggernaut he had no chance, and if he couldn't be first, what was the point in giving your all?
As for the year ahead of me, because I was taking senior-level classes junior year, one time I overheard the students behind me muttering about how Aubrey was going to be valedictorian, unless Mrs. W. (notoriously strict disciplinarian and harsh grader) screwed him over and gave him a B. Because--shock!--he'd gotten some Bs from her on assignments/exams. The other students, who were mostly in the top 10-20 (class of ~300), but not in the running for valedictorian, sounded outraged at her, because being valedictorian was Serious Business.
So, in a cutthroat environment like this, was there any chance I was not bragging at every possible opportunity? We had a pecking order! Talking smack was the order of the day! Future finances were riding on this!
It's also quite surprising, because these were not people who considered themselves intellectuals. Unlike me, they did not do unassigned reading or talk about intellectual topics or complain because school was too easy or have intellectual ambitions. I was the weird kid because I checked out books from the library and carried them with me and actually *liked* school. They happened to be good at completing the assigned work, but the cutthroat grade competition was for bragging rights and scholarship money for college in Arizona.
They had the same approach my parents did: you go to school and do your best. No one responded to "Mildred is making the best grades because she does unassigned work" with "So if I want to beat her, I should start doing unassigned work." It was all "It will be a cold day in hell when anyone beats Mildred at anything--she actually *likes* this stuff and does it voluntarily!"
But I didn't, because I could see that it wasn't really relevant to the fact that I did, in fact, suck at flute.
Lol, I would not have been able to resist!
she said that she was not going to give an intro chem award either for this reason (which I would easily have won), which my mom pointed out was a rather BS excuse, since her daughter was definitely not in the intro chem class!
Now I am outraged on your behalf!
(I guarantee my mom will remember if Mrs. W didn't. My mom does not forget grudges!)
Ha! I can still remember everyone who didn't give me the awards I had earned and who got them instead and am still disapproving. :P
It just boggles my mind because... don't they want their kids not to go through all the struggles they had to go through? I mean, this was a major motivation of my parents as we were growing up! My parents went through a *lot* and they really did not want their kids to have to do that!
Well, the thing is, they did! They made sure I didn't go through the struggles *they* had had to go through. It was the fact that I was completely different from them that was the problem.
My mom's struggle was with teachers writing her off. So she made sure that didn't happen to me. Her struggle was never being bored at school or wanting to do more than just make good grades. She was dyslexic, school was too hard for her! So if I was having an easier time than her and making better grades than her and was all set to go to college and even get a job someday, what right did I have to complain? I was set up for success by her standards!
The standard for success in our family was "have enough education that you could find a job if you needed to." My mother: "I have some community college credits, so if your dad died, I could find work as a subsitute teacher." And then, "Well, now that we live in Tucson, which is a college town, you need a degree for that, but if he died, I could move us back to a smaller town and get a job. We wouldn't starve."
Also, keep in mind my parents' anxiety disorders. That's key here to understanding their behavior. Me asking for things that they hadn't thought of and didn't know off the tops of their heads how to provide was interpreted as me saying they were inadequate parents, which resulted in them shutting me down and saying I was bad for asking for these things. It did not (by and large) lead to, "Let us find out how to do this thing that no one in our family has ever wanted to do." It was all, "We never wanted to do that! Nobody we know has ever wanted to do that! That is an unreasonable thing to want to do!"
Honestly, they didn't see me as struggling or going through a lot. They saw me as coasting and complaining about it. They specifically told me they didn't need to invest in my education, because my grades proved I was doing fine and would do fine in life without any investment. All the investment of resources went to my siblings, whom they could identify as struggling.
Also, this is how sparing your children from your struggles often played out in my family:
Grandma: *takes band in school*
Grandma: *plays the marching drum*
Grandma: *is too small and weak to carry the big drum in the parade*
Mom: *wants to play the clarinet at school*
Grandma: "No! I did not succeed at this and therefore you will not succeed at this."
Grandma: *does not sign the paper allowing my mom to play the clarinet*
Mom: *later complains to me about how silly this was*
Also Mom: *tries taking an independent study once*
Mom: *does not make a good grade*
Mildred: *wants to take European history as an independent study junior year*
Mom: "No! Independent studies are too hard! You are forbidden."
Mildred: *is stressed the entire year keeping her independent study a secret*
Mildred: *makes a good grade, obviously :P*
MY FAMILY