If you attended Deep Write Saturday, then you know all about writing prompts, which I offered up in case you didn’t know which direction to go. Writing prompts are a great way to unstick yourself, particularly when you’re trying to work linearly.
I decided to take my own medicine. This is how I came at the prompt: My greatest strength is also my greatest weakness, and here’s why….
First, just for the sake of this exercise, let me list my greatest strengths: I can make decisions quickly and act on them. I’m smart and I’ve learned that I can usually figure something out on my own. I’m efficient. I’m driven to complete a task, so follow through is a superpower. I’m good with languages. I can usually read a room and behave accordingly. I’m observant when it comes to people and am legitimately interested in how they think. I have a number of socio-economic privileges that make it easy for me to navigate the world. (Some of these are innate traits that I have no power over, some of them are learned.)
But let’s choose one of these. I’m smart and I’ve learned that I can usually figure something out on my own.
Which is where this story comes in.
When I was in tenth grade, Mr. Buttafuco, the guidance counselor, called me down to his office. This was the end of the school year, and I figured he probably wanted to know if I was planning on attending college so he could get me hooked up with the right prep courses.
Mr. Buttafuco began our meeting by asking after my life aspirations. I told him that I’d very much like to sail to Vietnam and get a good look at the country. Really dive into the language and the culture. Really experience the place for all that it was worth. I should probably note that this was 1979, or so. I was hanging around Vietnamese refugees, boat people they were called. Each of my friends—I tutored them once a week, so more accurately we can call them students—had tossed their few belongings into a rucksack, paid some fishing captain to get them out of the country, and fled across a pirate-infested ocean in the dead of night. They’d wanted out not because they thought the U.S. would be an awesome place to explore, but because they weren’t into being sent to a reeducation camp or thrown in prison. Life under communism, according to them, was a living hell.
P’shaw.
The guidance counselor stared incredulously at me while I spoke, then opened up my file. He spread it on his desk so we could both look at it. He announced, and he pointed at the number, that I had a “remarkable” IQ. He wanted to know why my grades reflected something else entirely.
To be fair, I was a solid B student, except for a D in geometry, the very reason I was about to do a stint in summer school. The nice man wanted to know what my problem was. Was I on drugs? Things OK at home?
I explained to him that I wasn’t a natural when it came to math. Lord knows I’d try. I’d read the textbook, sometimes twice, even though it was dry AF without a storyline, but when it came time to take the test, I couldn’t remember what to do.
“Well, you do the problems, too, don’t you?” To which I shook my head. I could follow along for my homework, sure, work the models when they were right in front of me, but that’s about as far as it went.
I explained that in my other courses, I was able to read the text, take some notes, maybe memorize a few dates when required, and do just fine on a test. If I couldn’t understand something after reading on it, then the subject wasn’t something I was suited for.
I had (have, if we’re to be honest) what is known as a fixed mindset. You’re either good at something, or you’re not, so there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. Or working to develop said skill.
If you’re “good” at enough things, it doesn’t occur to you that anything requires real work.
The thing about being “smart” –and wouldn’t it be hysterical if Mr. Buttafuco mixed up those files?!—is that it teaches you to immediately fold when you run into an obstacle. If it isn’t easy right out of the gate, then you’re not working in your zone of genius. (Let’s track down the person who coined that phrase and steal their little dog.)
Instead of struggling with something that didn’t yield itself to me on the first pass—a user’s manual is my arch nemesis—I’d throw up my hands and look for help. You do it for me, it’s just not my thing. Accompanied with the batting of eyelashes.
It’s taken me ages to risk new ventures that will require me to flounder for a bit. Why expose myself as a clueless fool, especially when I’m good at all this stuff over here? Go ahead, you stand at the starting line of the learning curve. But me? I’m supposed to be out the other side by noon.
Truth is, I still have the expectation that I should get the results of someone far more experienced without any of the associated effort. Without the practice, the test runs, the endless mediocrity until something finalllllyyyy clicks. The tears, grief, self-doubt.
Innate intelligence: the double-sided sword that keeps cutting the legs out from underneath me.
The thing about not trying because you shouldn’t have to is that you always have an excuse for mediocrity and failure. You never have to sink all that time and effort into something and see it flop in public. No sad plop of a result will ever reflect badly on you. You never have to question your real worth.
Let me rewrite that to better own it, because, when you suddenly shift to second person, you’re trying to disown it.
The thing about not trying because I shouldn’t have to is that I always have an excuse for mediocrity and failure. I never have to sink all that time and effort into something and see it flop in public. No sad plop of a result will ever reflect badly on me. I never have to question my real worth.
How would you write to that prompt?
