We humans
are creators of stories, and learning makes no difference. Everytime I succeed –
or fail – I receive some feedback about who I am. That feedback I use, often unconsciously,
to create a narrative, or story, about who I am. This can sometimes create
problems: too many failures in a row at math and I might create a narrative
portraying me as a student, who is bad at math. If I start believing that I’m
bad at math and therefore I failed, I’m
in the risky area. The problem is this
narrative can become self-fulfilling. For if I failed, because I suck, there
seems to be little light regarding future tests. My inability of doing math starts
to look like a static quality of myself. You can notice this happening if you
hear me saying “oh, I’d so love to ace my next math test, but it’s hopeless - I’m
just bad at math”.
But, the
critic might argue, doesn’t a bad result show that, in fact, you are bad at math? In a way, it does. But
it does not show that I’m permanently hopeless. A horrible result sure proves I
didn’t get it all right – but there’s no reason it couldn’t change next time.
Maybe I can create a narrative portraying me as bright math student who just
wasn’t paying attention, therefore failing a test. Perhaps the next exam is
going to be a turnaround leading me to a future where I’m superb at math! Who
knows what will happen?
Now, I don’t
know if all this made any sense, and frankly, just now I’m too tired for any
rewriting. Blame the end of the exam period, if you will. I hope you got
something out of it.
Tomorrow:
last exam of this semester and then off for some well-earned Christmas
holidays. Hopefully I’ll have more time and energy to read something besides
exam stuff. Maybe I’ll manage to crunch a post or two on the way.
