It’s Okay to Look Like an Idiot

idiot

When I was in Grade 4, I was identified as “gifted” by my school board. As a result of that, I started going to a separate gifted program at another school for one day a week from Grades 5 to 8. It was a great program that allowed me to explore many neat things not really provided in the regular school setting, such as creative group projects, puzzles, logic games, independent-study projects, etc.

When school boards administer these tests to identify students as gifted, it affects students emotionally and mentally. The main reason for this is because it creates labels, and subsequently, it creates an imaginary divide between students: “gifted” and “non-gifted”. A lot of people seem to associate the term gifted with intelligent, and so to some students, it’s almost as if you are saying that they are not intelligent because they are in the “non-gifted” group. Conversely, students in the gifted group are often expected to do well in school because people now assume they are “intelligent” – so anything less than academic excellence is a disappointment.

I don’t really want to go into a whole discussion of intelligence because that’s not what I want to focus this article on. What I will say is that I am personally a believer in a form of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I believe that everyone has a distinct combination of different types of intelligence, which is why humanity has been able to produce and do so many different and amazing things.

The test that my school board used to identify gifted students largely rested on analyzing only a student’s logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligences– and not surprisingly, these are the types of skills that help students do well in traditional school subjects. It’s nice that school boards help develop these particular skills for students highly gifted in those areas, but at the same time, it could also be argued that students who excel in other intelligence areas aren’t receiving equal treatment.

Unfair Expectations From Other Students

One of the backlashes of being identified as gifted were other people’s expectations. And no, I don’t mean my parents – their expectations were already ridiculously high (haha I had to say that because my dad reads this blog). More so, and partly for emotional reasons, expectations were higher (and in a way, unfairly founded) from other fellow students.

These labels created a sort of divide between the gifted and non-gifted students. I don’t mean a really significant divide where the groups segregated (though in some areas, gifted students actually do go to a completely different school every day). I always had friends who were not labelled as gifted in my classes. However, there were times when some students felt hurt by the labels – I mean I can definitely understand, especially at that age, that some students might have taken this to mean they “weren’t smart” or something.

As a result, some of these students started pouncing on a gifted student whenever they made a mistake in the classroom. It was as if they were determined to prove that gifted students weren’t as smart as everyone else thought they were. Whenever I (or another gifted student) got something wrong in class, someone would say: “Wow, how could you get that wrong? I thought you were gifted!” Later on in Grade 8, I remember learning from my gifted program teacher that this was a common occurrence in many schools.

I mean, today as older people with more life experience, we realize that no one is completely infallible to mistakes. But when you are a kid, things are a lot different. And some kids who are identified as gifted may start expecting themselves to never make a mistake. That kind of attitude is really unhealthy, and hopefully, kids from both sides of the fence grow out of it. It really is an unfortunate aspect of the process, and now that I think about it, no one ever did anything to educate the class about what the whole gifted thing was.

I Started to Fear Making Mistakes

I don’t like being humiliated or embarrassed, so when I noticed that other students started pouncing whenever I made a mistake, I started to get a bit scared. I didn’t like being teased like that. But to be fair, it was probably partly because I had an ego. I liked having the image that I was “smart” or something, I thought it was pretty cool.

The problem with that mindset and that environment is that it produces a child who is scared to make mistakes – I became such a kid. Subsequently, in class, I would rarely put up my hand unless I was 100% sure of the answer. I even remember a few times when I did put up my hand, but some other student was called first and gave an answer completely different from mine. When I heard the teacher say that student was correct, I would think to myself, “boy, I’m glad the teacher didn’t pick me to answer. It would’ve been so embarrassing if I had gotten that wrong!”

This mentality extended far beyond just answering questions in class. Whenever some event was happening (like say a school show) and the host would ask someone to come up and volunteer for something, I would never, ever volunteer. I didn’t want to mess up. I didn’t want to look stupid in front of everyone else.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Being Wrong

And so for several years in my childhood, I had this unhealthy attitude of keeping a perfect image because I feared being teased – and later that turned into the fear of making mistakes and looking foolish. I never realized that by not trying, I was preventing myself from being in a position to succeed. And by not trying, I am preventing myself from learning from mistakes.

If there’s anything I have learned about myself, it’s that I learn best by taking shots and making my own mistakes. I mean no one gets on a bike and rides perfectly their first time (okay okay I’m sure you did this, I’m so jealous). But really, for most of us, it takes time, effort, and mistakes. A lot of the time I will know something is wrong, but I really can’t internalize it until I make the mistake. By committing the mistake, I have the painful consequences of that mistake so ingrained in memory that I never let it happen again.

To be frank, I still have the fear of making mistakes in public and looking like an idiot. Even though I know I shouldn’t and I finally understand where it stems from, it’s still there. Sometimes when my friends want to try a new activity, I am reluctant about taking part because I don’t want to look like the fool who is out of place and inexperienced. Part of it is also because I am impatient and I hate failing – not a good combination for trying to learn something new from scratch! It’s something I still struggle with, but am hoping I will continue to overcome.