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All Kinds of Smart
Nov. 1st, 2012 10:52 pmWhat has been making me feel like shit (mentally that is, the physical stuff is easy to answer). I realised sometime in the last couple of days it’s because I feel dumb. I feel stupid. I feel like I’m lacking something in the area of intelligence. Why would I feel like this???
I had a pretty average childhood I guess, some would say lucky. We didn’t have a lot, but we had enough materially and my parents were always there to support me. They encouraged me to be the best at being me, they didn’t push me into anything. They did worry about things like job security and they did have the idea that you get a job and stick to it forever. Although, years later my dad said to me ‘Megan, I had the same job for 40 years and I hated it, so you do what you want’.
I went through school and I had no aspirations to go to uni, in fact I didn’t really know anything about uni, no one in my family had ever been. They had all left school at 15 and gone straight to work.
I had always liked art and craft and had been playing around making and drawing things since I could remember and at 25 I got into art school. Prior to this I had thought I was too old to go to uni and I had to just keep working but some things happened that led me to believe I needed to take the leap and go. It was partly inspired by attending evening classes at the art school. The smell of the building everything about it, after two weeks of evening classes I decided I had to go to this place. I worked my arse off to get in. I didn’t get in on the first round of offers, which nearly crushed me, but I got in on the second round of offers. It was one of the best moments of my life, the head of the department at the other end of the phone telling me I had gotten in. Because of the effort involved in getting in, I didn’t want to miss any opportunity. I knew what was going on and what I needed to do for all my classes the whole time I was there. I had found determination and I had found something that made me feel good. I had found a big part of myself.
Art school not only taught me a whole lot of ‘arty’ skills, practical skills it also helped me to learn and think differently. I know that my lateral thinking skills is something that definitely helps me with many things to this day and I know I learnt these at art school.
A number of years later after I had finished art school, I completed a teaching diploma. I had known all along that to live as an artist alone was a bit of a pipe dream and probably only something that select, select people could actually do. I did my teaching diploma and had a really crappy experience on my first round of practicum teaching , which basically resulted in me getting a crappy rating for gaining a job in the public school system. Somewhere in there and looking for a job I ended up having a conversation with a friend of a friend type of thing and I ended up scoring this job which was to teach literacy to young people out of youth centres.
Literacy to young people out of youth centres, holy fuck, how the hell would I do that, I had trained to be an art teacher. So I embarked on a job that ended up being the beginning of my journey to understanding people.
I worked for 5 years, the job started out as 20 hours a week and 5 years later it was one and a half full time jobs, because I was very good at what I did it turned out. The program involved teaching young people literacy, in places that they felt the most comfortable which was usually youth centres. We’re talking hard core young people who had the most difficulty learning anything, they were aged between 12 and 25. They were most often scared of school environments and classrooms because of what they represented. They were young people who had undiagnosed learning disabilities; they were young people from dysfunctional, often abusive families; they were young carers, looking after someone at home. They were young Aboriginal people who had suffered discrimination of all kinds. They were young people who came from all sorts of disadvantage.
I’m sure they taught me more than what I ever taught them. At first I was working out how to relate to them, as well as how to teach. One of the overwhelming feelings these young people had was that they were dumb. They would say to me, ‘do I come to see you because I’m dumb’ and similar such statements, which were always heart breaking. Over the years I gained a lot of experience in how to teach and communicate with all kinds of young people, I learnt what their needs were to help them grow and be better people and to succeed, at whatever level succeeding was to them.
When I was working with these young people and they told me they were dumb, I used to tell them that everyone had something they were good at and that they liked, that there were all kinds of versions of smart and I would point out things like musicians or how someone was really great at sport. I would encourage them to find things they liked and pursue that in terms of jobs or practical application. When they first came to see me, most of them had lost any courage in learning, they had been told or lead to believe they were stupid and it was something that had often been repeated to them over and over again. I helped them learn critical thinking skills and I taught them how to learn. As they did this their self esteem would improve and in turn their literacy skills.
Today I was thinking about this and thinking that I needed to remember all the things that I had said to the young people I used to teach. That there are different kinds of smart and I am indeed not dumb or stupid.
Then I got to thinking about why or how did I get to this place of thinking.
After I left this job I went to work at a youth service as the manager. I wanted to learn how to manage staff. It was also at the beginning of my coming out. The next biggest event after art school (I did get married and that also ended in this time as well).
I continued to become and develop my skills as an advocate for disadvantaged and vulnerable people and focussed on young people and education of a sorts. I had realised I had a passion for helping other people discover their passions and to reach their full potential through education. I felt that nothing should get in the way of someone reaching their full potential, and I still believe this strongly. If people are not given equitable opportunity to learn then they can’t learn. It doesn’t mean they are stupid. It used to get my back up when I had someone quoting someone else’s IQ to me. That is bullshit, I have always focussed on what the person can do, not what the person can’t do.
I worked in that position for a number of years and during that time, amongst other things was trying to do a lot of work for Canberra’s queer youth. I left this position after a few years because it turned into a situation where I was doing less for the young people and having to justify numbers and why I was doing what I was doing for the funding provider of our service. By this point in time I had been exposed to, and heard so many stories, horrible stories of mistreatment of people and injustices. I had assisted, and helped my staff assist so many young people in crisis or young people who had to push shit up hill to get anywhere in life. I would have to say the most awful times for me was Friday afternoons in winter, when the phone calls would come from young homeless people looking for accommodation over the weekend. Although there are most likely people in worse situations than this, this was just my ‘sore spot’. I think all community workers have a ‘sore spot’ or a group of people they find it near impossible to work with.
I moved on from this position and went and worked for a local AIDS council which also assists lots of the queer population in it’s work. While I was working here I had a friend suicide and then a series of friends with mental health issues which I assisted as best as I could.
Throughout these years I also came out and got heavily involved in advocating and assisting the local queer community. I was also completing a masters degree. After this I worked for an advocacy organisation and was looking at the population of Canberra as a whole.
I had gradually moved away from direct service type of work and was doing more advocacy work, but in my time in the community sector I have worked with many, many, many types of people. I know people, I have people smarts. I believe I have exceptional skills in understanding people as individuals and groups and what their obstacles in life might be.
While I was working for the advocacy organisation I had this moment of..’Oh MY GOD, I KNOW TOO MUCH’ . At that point in time I had to have a good understanding of many of the systems of government and what was being done in particular areas. And I thought ‘OH MY GOD, WE’RE ALL FUCKED, EVERYTHING IS FUCKED’ . I believe this was the point where I was burnt out, or the beginning of it. I had given so much for a long time, driven and pushed to try to help make some other people’s lives better and I was tired. Looking at what was going on from a big picture perspective, everything just seemed fucked and hopeless. People were being mistreated and subject to all kinds of injustice and the way things were going it was only going to get worse.
Not long after that, I finished writing my thesis, which was a big struggle to write and get finished. After this I had a range of illnesses, one after the other, which was actually stress. Stress headaches, and odd gizzard, bad memory all sorts of things. I decided to leave my job and have a break. My months break ended up turning into three months.
In this time I began to shut the world out. I hadn’t really been watching television, but I stopped watching television, stopped reading any kind of news articles. I shut out the world as best as I could because it was all fucked and too hard to deal with.
Now I find myself 18 months later in a new job, in the community sector. It’s a job I love and I’m back to advocating and working with people. Well I never gave up really. But I did, and have shut lots of things out of my life. I feel quite out of touch because of it, but I just can’t deal with it all. It’s too much negativity. I feel out of touch with what is going on in popular culture – the young people used to keep me quite up to speed on everything. I am pretty inept with technology and find it hard to navigate any kinds of technology, which in the world we live in, is the way to get new information and communicate in ways we didn’t in the olden days.
I have also been unwell, and the pain that I’ve had physically has also contributed to my low self esteem. I don’t feel good in the body and the unwellness I am sure has also affected my head. I have no resilience to things and so when I can’t contribute to a conversation or I don’t know something, because I am so out of touch with things I just feel dumb. But I need to remind myself of the very thing I used to say to the young people I worked with. You aren’t dumb, there are all kinds of smart. My smart is people and knowing how to work with and understand them. I’m also not bad at creative endeavours.
I had a pretty average childhood I guess, some would say lucky. We didn’t have a lot, but we had enough materially and my parents were always there to support me. They encouraged me to be the best at being me, they didn’t push me into anything. They did worry about things like job security and they did have the idea that you get a job and stick to it forever. Although, years later my dad said to me ‘Megan, I had the same job for 40 years and I hated it, so you do what you want’.
I went through school and I had no aspirations to go to uni, in fact I didn’t really know anything about uni, no one in my family had ever been. They had all left school at 15 and gone straight to work.
I had always liked art and craft and had been playing around making and drawing things since I could remember and at 25 I got into art school. Prior to this I had thought I was too old to go to uni and I had to just keep working but some things happened that led me to believe I needed to take the leap and go. It was partly inspired by attending evening classes at the art school. The smell of the building everything about it, after two weeks of evening classes I decided I had to go to this place. I worked my arse off to get in. I didn’t get in on the first round of offers, which nearly crushed me, but I got in on the second round of offers. It was one of the best moments of my life, the head of the department at the other end of the phone telling me I had gotten in. Because of the effort involved in getting in, I didn’t want to miss any opportunity. I knew what was going on and what I needed to do for all my classes the whole time I was there. I had found determination and I had found something that made me feel good. I had found a big part of myself.
Art school not only taught me a whole lot of ‘arty’ skills, practical skills it also helped me to learn and think differently. I know that my lateral thinking skills is something that definitely helps me with many things to this day and I know I learnt these at art school.
A number of years later after I had finished art school, I completed a teaching diploma. I had known all along that to live as an artist alone was a bit of a pipe dream and probably only something that select, select people could actually do. I did my teaching diploma and had a really crappy experience on my first round of practicum teaching , which basically resulted in me getting a crappy rating for gaining a job in the public school system. Somewhere in there and looking for a job I ended up having a conversation with a friend of a friend type of thing and I ended up scoring this job which was to teach literacy to young people out of youth centres.
Literacy to young people out of youth centres, holy fuck, how the hell would I do that, I had trained to be an art teacher. So I embarked on a job that ended up being the beginning of my journey to understanding people.
I worked for 5 years, the job started out as 20 hours a week and 5 years later it was one and a half full time jobs, because I was very good at what I did it turned out. The program involved teaching young people literacy, in places that they felt the most comfortable which was usually youth centres. We’re talking hard core young people who had the most difficulty learning anything, they were aged between 12 and 25. They were most often scared of school environments and classrooms because of what they represented. They were young people who had undiagnosed learning disabilities; they were young people from dysfunctional, often abusive families; they were young carers, looking after someone at home. They were young Aboriginal people who had suffered discrimination of all kinds. They were young people who came from all sorts of disadvantage.
I’m sure they taught me more than what I ever taught them. At first I was working out how to relate to them, as well as how to teach. One of the overwhelming feelings these young people had was that they were dumb. They would say to me, ‘do I come to see you because I’m dumb’ and similar such statements, which were always heart breaking. Over the years I gained a lot of experience in how to teach and communicate with all kinds of young people, I learnt what their needs were to help them grow and be better people and to succeed, at whatever level succeeding was to them.
When I was working with these young people and they told me they were dumb, I used to tell them that everyone had something they were good at and that they liked, that there were all kinds of versions of smart and I would point out things like musicians or how someone was really great at sport. I would encourage them to find things they liked and pursue that in terms of jobs or practical application. When they first came to see me, most of them had lost any courage in learning, they had been told or lead to believe they were stupid and it was something that had often been repeated to them over and over again. I helped them learn critical thinking skills and I taught them how to learn. As they did this their self esteem would improve and in turn their literacy skills.
Today I was thinking about this and thinking that I needed to remember all the things that I had said to the young people I used to teach. That there are different kinds of smart and I am indeed not dumb or stupid.
Then I got to thinking about why or how did I get to this place of thinking.
After I left this job I went to work at a youth service as the manager. I wanted to learn how to manage staff. It was also at the beginning of my coming out. The next biggest event after art school (I did get married and that also ended in this time as well).
I continued to become and develop my skills as an advocate for disadvantaged and vulnerable people and focussed on young people and education of a sorts. I had realised I had a passion for helping other people discover their passions and to reach their full potential through education. I felt that nothing should get in the way of someone reaching their full potential, and I still believe this strongly. If people are not given equitable opportunity to learn then they can’t learn. It doesn’t mean they are stupid. It used to get my back up when I had someone quoting someone else’s IQ to me. That is bullshit, I have always focussed on what the person can do, not what the person can’t do.
I worked in that position for a number of years and during that time, amongst other things was trying to do a lot of work for Canberra’s queer youth. I left this position after a few years because it turned into a situation where I was doing less for the young people and having to justify numbers and why I was doing what I was doing for the funding provider of our service. By this point in time I had been exposed to, and heard so many stories, horrible stories of mistreatment of people and injustices. I had assisted, and helped my staff assist so many young people in crisis or young people who had to push shit up hill to get anywhere in life. I would have to say the most awful times for me was Friday afternoons in winter, when the phone calls would come from young homeless people looking for accommodation over the weekend. Although there are most likely people in worse situations than this, this was just my ‘sore spot’. I think all community workers have a ‘sore spot’ or a group of people they find it near impossible to work with.
I moved on from this position and went and worked for a local AIDS council which also assists lots of the queer population in it’s work. While I was working here I had a friend suicide and then a series of friends with mental health issues which I assisted as best as I could.
Throughout these years I also came out and got heavily involved in advocating and assisting the local queer community. I was also completing a masters degree. After this I worked for an advocacy organisation and was looking at the population of Canberra as a whole.
I had gradually moved away from direct service type of work and was doing more advocacy work, but in my time in the community sector I have worked with many, many, many types of people. I know people, I have people smarts. I believe I have exceptional skills in understanding people as individuals and groups and what their obstacles in life might be.
While I was working for the advocacy organisation I had this moment of..’Oh MY GOD, I KNOW TOO MUCH’ . At that point in time I had to have a good understanding of many of the systems of government and what was being done in particular areas. And I thought ‘OH MY GOD, WE’RE ALL FUCKED, EVERYTHING IS FUCKED’ . I believe this was the point where I was burnt out, or the beginning of it. I had given so much for a long time, driven and pushed to try to help make some other people’s lives better and I was tired. Looking at what was going on from a big picture perspective, everything just seemed fucked and hopeless. People were being mistreated and subject to all kinds of injustice and the way things were going it was only going to get worse.
Not long after that, I finished writing my thesis, which was a big struggle to write and get finished. After this I had a range of illnesses, one after the other, which was actually stress. Stress headaches, and odd gizzard, bad memory all sorts of things. I decided to leave my job and have a break. My months break ended up turning into three months.
In this time I began to shut the world out. I hadn’t really been watching television, but I stopped watching television, stopped reading any kind of news articles. I shut out the world as best as I could because it was all fucked and too hard to deal with.
Now I find myself 18 months later in a new job, in the community sector. It’s a job I love and I’m back to advocating and working with people. Well I never gave up really. But I did, and have shut lots of things out of my life. I feel quite out of touch because of it, but I just can’t deal with it all. It’s too much negativity. I feel out of touch with what is going on in popular culture – the young people used to keep me quite up to speed on everything. I am pretty inept with technology and find it hard to navigate any kinds of technology, which in the world we live in, is the way to get new information and communicate in ways we didn’t in the olden days.
I have also been unwell, and the pain that I’ve had physically has also contributed to my low self esteem. I don’t feel good in the body and the unwellness I am sure has also affected my head. I have no resilience to things and so when I can’t contribute to a conversation or I don’t know something, because I am so out of touch with things I just feel dumb. But I need to remind myself of the very thing I used to say to the young people I worked with. You aren’t dumb, there are all kinds of smart. My smart is people and knowing how to work with and understand them. I’m also not bad at creative endeavours.
