Day 16 (+4): Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, but Only If I Feel Like It.

(Yes, yes, I got even more behind. I’ll catch up though. Eventually.)

My inspiration today is this article. I thought it quite interesting. The article’s theory is that girls are taught from an early age that intelligence/cleverness is an innate ability that one does or doesn’t possess, while boys are taught that intelligence/cleverness can be improved upon through focus and hard work. Because of this, the article supposes that girls (specifically at the 5^th grade level) give up more easily when they come to an obstacle than boys do.

I, of course, had to think back to my 5^th grade experience. Most of my 5^th grade memories aren’t academic—after all, it was 1999 to 2000, so I mostly remember being worried that the end of times was nigh. (Seriously, kid you not, the only thing that managed to quell my fear was on New Year’s Eve when the year changed over in Asia and Australia, and I thought, If it made it to 2000 there…) I also have other memories from the year, also not related to my studies, like the weight related one I touched on in this post.

The one thing that really stands out from what I learned was this poetry contest. Basically, my teacher had us each write a poem, and the ones chosen would be entered into this anthology.
And I was just so confident about it. I remember thinking, I’ve got this in the bag. Yeah, I know—I was such a huge turd-nugget. Anyway, turns out I was right; my poem along with two others in my class were chosen to be put in the book [here’s the Amazon link of the edition I was in]. The book is somewhere at my parents’ house, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t bring it with me.

How does that anecdote tie in with the article? Well, I thought I had an innate ability to write well, when to be honest, I knew how to play the system. Rhyming? Check. Ridiculous premise? Check. Set stanza form to make it sound more lyrical? Check. 5^th Grade Samantha didn’t play no games, yo. And part of me purposefully knew that I was writing something that would appeal to whoever was choosing the winners. But mostly, I just had been kind of catered to believe I was an awesome writer.

I know now that there has to be an internal desire to be a writer, but it does take hard work. I’m sure that if I had applied myself, I could have focused more on the hard sciences or math, and went to college in those areas. But I had always been told that reading/writing was my thing.

So was it because I was a girl? I don’t think so. Having an older sister who had been praised more for the sciences and math areas, I think it was more of a comparative things. At that same age, Heather struggled more with getting the context behind the reading, while I usually made mistakes on math (I would add when I needed to multiply, stuff like that). It was the way my parents (and teachers) saw what we were actually good at. It was one of the good things that came out of having a sibling so close to my age that —adults could compare us and actually say, Sibling 1 is good at one thing while Sibling 2 is good at another.

I do think the theory holds some water. After all, I remember in high school, getting so frustrated in my math classes, and just plain becoming pissy about it. Granted, I still did well, but I was so used to knowing how to do things almost immediately, or with very little thinking, that any obstacle just bothered me. I quickly learned in college that sometimes things take time.
I don’t think that was fully a girl thing either. It was more based on my own inflated ego about schoolwork. (What can I say? I know I was full of myself.)

My point is, while I can see why the article comes to that conclusion, I wonder how much is situational and based on that particular girl’s experience in the classroom.