Greatest Strength. Greatest Weakness
by beccaborrelli
"Femme Maison". 1994. Louise Bourgeois
Sometimes the best wisdom isn’t an ee Cummings quote. Sometimes the best wisdom comes while sitting on a couch watching a movie with friends. Someone takes a swig of beer, puts their feet on the coffee table and states rather unremarkably:
“You know, my greatest strength is my greatest weakness.”
Research has shown that the human unconscious has infinite capacity. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my brain matter is the breakfast I had on June 13, 1985.
My conscious mind? Not so roomy. The things that my conscious mind holds are therefore very precious. If I remember something my friend said between sips of Heineken four years ago on a Saturday, I assume it’s important shit. Important to my path. My identity. My life.
I have remembered this friend’s movie night rumination ever since, and I know I will reference it for the rest of my life. My greatest strength is my greatest weakness. That statement has aided me in some of the toughest lessons, and most triumphant accomplishments.
The most beautiful part?
Between Donny Darko scenes, Doritos, and laughing twenty-somethings, my life was changed.
***
A strength: I’m a fabulous big picture person. I tend to see connections where no one else sees them. I think I have a knack for seeing the merit in most points of view simultaneously. I love paradox. Whenever someone talks, I play devil’s advocate in my head, trying to create a whole pie out of their personal slice. Some call this creative.
A weakness: I’m a terrible small picture person. My first year of teaching, with virtual ease, I pondered how I would address the industrial framework of public education; articulate what student’s were missing; and how to offer something fresh in my class. Yet for the life of me, finding a workable way to organize student artwork, store supplies, and keep up on grading was intensely difficult. Some call this ADHD.
I learned early on that making life decisions using the intellectual cement truck in my head was not time efficient. A tendency to see things in big pictures got in the way. I would end up lost in mazes of possibilities. Even though my rational mind sucked at focusing, I learned my unconscious was pretty dang awesome at it. I learned people with ADHD are more intuitive than those who aren’t. Maybe they can’t explain, but they can still know.
Greatest Strength. Greatest Weakness.
***
An example of this intuition happened my Freshman year of undergrad. I was enrolled as a Graphic Design student, and after one semester learned that I hated it. I was terrible at it.
“How about Art Education?” said my advisor.
I felt deflated, as if I was being pushed into a “softer” program because “I couldn’t hack it” in the militant design program. Yet on the first day, of my first art education class, I was struck by a cliché lightening bolt.
I felt home.
I felt like a teacher.
I thought like a teacher.
The readings we did, the projects we executed… everything felt natural… as if I was born to do this work. I wasn’t too weak to be a designer. I was a fish trying to hang out with birds. In an instant, I cut through all the possibilities and found the one with my name on it.
Leaving the tree and finding the pond didn’t happen by data analysis. It just felt much better being in water, so I trusted it. Early on, I realized this was the best way for me to make big decisions. Of course the greatest strength has a greatest weakness, and making decisions this way was scary because it wasn’t measurable. It wasn’t easy to conversate with friends at happy hour, or to parents on the phone why water felt better than air.
I found the older I became, the less I trusted my feelings as a compass. Why did you leave your family, amazing job, boyfriend and financial stability to move Austin and be a poor grad student? A feeling? I waste a lot more time these days dissecting my feelings… looking for a way to do what I was not built to do… find proof that my feeling is trustworthy.
***
I would have really loved a class on this stuff. Not a test taking, worksheet filling, analyzing, memorizing, regurgitating class. What I would have loved was a teacher who asked us to think about this stuff.
The “following your heart” stuff.
“The opposite of one profound truth is another profound truth” stuff.
The “finding your identity” stuff.
Instead of memorizing the quadratic formula in Algebra– a skill I have yet to use outside the SAT and GRE– I would have loved one class on things unfit for a spreadsheet or district report card. Just one class, so that when I’m taking on the tough stuff,
the relationship stuff,
the identity stuff,
the who am I stuff,
my strengths and weakness stuff,
I can look back on my sixteen years of schooling and find something… anything deeper than the framework of a Haiku poem, the periodic table, or the fastest way to add fractions.
This Brazen Teacher 
With all due respect (and a lot is due), I disagree with your conclusion. It is the function of life, not school, to teach you that. This is the type of learning that should come sitting on a couch with friends and some beer, not in a classroom. It’s life, not school, and yes, there is (and should be) a difference. I can’t imaging that there would be very many kids in school — at least in the first 16 years of school — who would be able to appreciate this lesson, or this field of study. I’m 25 years past my first 16 years of school and just starting to delve into this stuff. (I realize that I may be slower than most.)
On the other hand, to the extent that some of those things did come out in my schooling, they came out through reading and talking about books. If you want that stuff in school, be an English major.
I appreciate this comment! It’s relevant, and a good point.
Ask 100 people what schools should do- you get roughly 100 answers. Most would agree generally speaking, schools are supposed to prepare children, socially, intellectually, and emotionally to handle participating in capitalist society. From this perspective your point is spot on.
I tend to write from a “how I think things should be” perspective. I believe school should educate children to be happy, free thinking humans– who have an intimate connection with their identity, and talents. Most teachers (and parents!) I’ve encountered in my career also believe these things. Where I tend to disagree with most people, is how to go about accomplishing that. I believe we should cut huge chunks of class time spent on academic competitive striving and performance evaluation, and balance it with less quantifiable learning. Most people agree with me in theory, and depart in practice, because my ideas are pretty counter to the economic model of schooling.
I disagree (with equal respect to you!) that children are too young to reflect on the “big stuff.” Do I think existential concepts should be dumped on 5 year olds? Hardly. Big Stuff for kids are topics like bullying, death, divorce, feelings, friends, fighting etc… topics that when covered in my classes growing up… were reduced to coloring worksheets with fun slogans like “Don’t Smoke!” and “Don’t Tease.”
Also, I agree that life IS a place to learn these things! So true. My qualm: school takes up a large part of life! 8 hours a day, 180 days a year, 12 years- bare minimum! Therefore life AND school should prepare children in this way. This post was a call for balance. I really appreciate your comment- it made me think a lot. As usual, my response is a post in itself! Oh my nerdiness is so glaring. Thank you again!
Cheers,
B
Do you mind if I monopolize your comments on this one? Because what you say interests me, and I don’t have a lot of opportunities in my non-digital life to talk and think about this stuff. And I’m always eager to be pushed to think deeper and better and differently.
I regretted my comment almost as soon as I sent it — I was too flip, and too much the devil’s advocate. Also, I remembered something my daughter’s kindergarten teacher told her class last year: Do your best and move on. I don’t know of a better life lesson — for me and for the seven-year-olds.
Upon reflection (and upon reading your comment), I agree that these bigger-picture issues do have a place in school. I think what I bridled at was that the teacher would ask the class to think about these things. To have a class on “finding your way” or “figuring out who you are.” That’s what seemed false and hard-to-do to me.
I’m not sure that kids/people are so good at thinking about these things in the abstract, without real-life experiences to attach them to. What I’ve seen amazing teachers do is to bring these issues out and get kids thinking about them in an organic way — by asking questions, having discussions that start out mundane, by sharing their own experiences and fallibilities. And I love that and am thrilled to see it and hear about it and would support and encourage it in any way I could. So yes, I’d like there to be more of that — more room for that — in schools.
Yours in nerdy solidarity,
Nibor
It’s not monopolizing 🙂 I appreciated your comment for another reason, which I didn’t mention:
You were right to bristle at my post. The way it was written came across as a suggestion to create a “finding yourself class.” I bet you were reflecting a sentiment that many others reading this post thought.
No one can explicitly ask children to do this. You were correct, it’s too abstract. But as you pointed out- creating circumstances that allow children to reflect organically IS a workable way to teach big ideas.
Having people question the ideas on this blog is SO helpful. As I write for school, I become so accustomed to the ideas, I forget how they sound to others.
Cheers 🙂
TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell ‘crocodile?’
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L’
TEACHER: No, that’s wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
(I Love this child)
Bless you, love! 🙂
Excellent, points. I agree and relate completely. And you know, there are some of us who could benefit from such a teaching as this at an earlier age. *wink* I’m 28 and would have made totally different decisions had I realized this at 18. Not knowing this made my 20’s almost imbearable. But nonetheless, great article…please put the hammer down, you’ve hit the nail square on the head.
James