Times I wish I had been able to advocate for myself better

[owlectomy]

1. When I was in grad school I was taking a management class. The class was doing a "team building" exercise that involved some outdoor obstacle-course kind of stuff. I bowed out because I had broken my ankle and was on crutches.

Because I could not go to the "team building" exercise, I had to go find three hours of volunteer work to do.

This isn't much. It is, however, pretty hard to find volunteer work when you live in the suburbs and don't have a car, and you've got classes and a job that leave you with small, weird lumps of free time. I managed it. But now it strikes me as ridiculous that I had to spend three hours sorting through moldy sweet potatoes for the food bank because I broke my ankle and was on crutches when everyone else was playing around with ziplines and whatnot.

2. When I was in high school I got sent to the guidance counselor... kind of often. Mostly this was because I was having minor panic attacks in the school cafeteria? My guidance counselor told me it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. And that if I was getting migraines it was because I was too stressed and I should try being less stressed.

3. In high school there was an assignment to find a scholarship you're eligible for an write up an application for it. I spent weeks and weeks searching before I finally found one that non-US-citizens were eligible for. (I don't remember when I learned that non-citizens were basically not eligible for any financial aid at US colleges -- it may have been a little later, but it was certainly a factor in going to school in Canada.) I tried to explain this to the teacher, who... really did not care.
In retrospect I should have lied, because it wasn't like my citizenship status was any of her business.

I think one of the things that makes post-school life different from in-school life is that you have a totally different relationship to authority. I was reading all kinds of leftist anti-mainstream-education stuff even when I was in high school, but somehow I never really felt that I ought to take my own experiences and my own feelings seriously when they butted up against what I had been told to do.

I've read a lot of articles bemoaning the fact that girls do better than boys in school on average, that school plays to their strengths -- obedience to authority figures, sitting down, verbal intelligence. Obviously I don't agree with gender-essentialist claptrap, but I want to raise the possibility that being well-socialized to obey authority ... actually is not such a good thing. And I think it would be better for girls AND boys if that were less of a thing in schools.

If I had to do it over again I think I would have yelled more, called people out more, lied more, and been angrier. And it probably wouldn't have made any difference because people tend to file all that under "just teenage angst."

Comments

[laceblade]

For the most part, I spent high school arguing back. I got good grades & teachers liked me and whatever, but I also argued over every fucking possible thing with them, with priests, my parents, whatever.

And I feel like it was about the same, people just thought I was a bitch.


I feel angry on your behalf about all of these, but #2 just kills me.

[sasha_feather]

To me the solution is not necessarily advocating for yourself, but having a system in place that is more flexible. It is not hard to imagine that not everyone in the class will be able to do the ropes course; therefore set up an alternative or just schedule something that is accessible in the first place. It is not hard to imagine that not all your students might not be citizens... so build this into your assignment.

HS Guidance counselors, in my experience, are totally inept, though.

[sasha_feather]

Because I overthink things, etc, I'm rethinking this comment today-- yeah, systems can always be improved, but OTOH people are always going to need to advocate for themselves. People have been writing about/linking to Captain Awkward lately and it seems like she is all about teaching this skill-- teaching people to say no and communicate their discomfort, etc etc.

[writerjenn.livejournal.com]

"I want to raise the possibility that being well-socialized to obey authority ... actually is not such a good thing."

I don't think it's a good thing either. But dissent in the ranks is not valued in most modern workplaces, and I've read plenty of conjecture that the purpose of school is not to educate people for their own benefit, but to train them to be obedient employees.