Being weird and homeschooling
Nov 7, 2008 Homeschooling
Julia and I were talking homeschooling the other day (a big discussion/gentle debate) and she said, I like to think gently, that maybe I liked being the odd parent out and this had something to do with our homeschooling choice. You know, that much of my identity comes from going against the grain.
I’ve been thinking on this. It’s a charge I’ve had leveled at me before especially when I was a disgruntled teen with bad punk rock hair and questionable taste in clothes. It’s true that when I was a teenager that I reveled in my weirdness but that’s just it — I didn’t like to be weird; I was weird. And when I was a teen and grappling with my identity, I wanted to be very in people’s faces about it as teens will be.
So see, it’s not that my identity is wrapped up in being weird like a status symbol; it’s that I am who I am and I’ve learned to be proud of it as opposed to defensive and worried about it. Am I proud of being a homeschooler? Sure. I’m proud that we’re living out our values even though homeschooling has added to our challenges as a family (financially for the most part) and I don’t need that celebrated although it would be nice to have it accepted instead of questioned.
Back to being weird and how it relates to our homeschooling choices. I was an odd kid and pretty early on I figured it out as odd kids will do. It seemed like I usually wanted to do things differently than my friends or had interests that they didn’t share. I’m fortunate that I wasn’t the kind of kid who got harassed much and I’m sure part of this is that my mom (and I think my dad) like me an awful lot and told me so. What made me weird, I learned early on, was also what made me special so I never wanted to pretend to be something I wasn’t.
I think when it comes to intrinsic weirdness having confidence is what saves you from getting harassed. Also as introverted as I am (and this introversion certainly contributed both to my weirdness and my school misery), I do like people and my social skills were always good. You know, “plays well with others” and stuff like that. I’ve always had close knit friends and generally get along with people and my unhappiness with the social world at school had to do with the way I saw it and experienced it and not with how I was treated.
There are two bullies that stand-out in memory — one being some random kid in Chicago who used to follow me home from school and wash my face in the snow. I don’t know how it started or how it ended but I remember the feeling of trying to get across the wide open field between the school and our house during the blizzard of ‘78. The snow was too deep for me to get across quickly, so I’d struggle huffing and puffing and praying he didn’t catch me. The other bully was in middle school, one Eric Bielke who was a big, dumb, mean guy and who had it in for me for reasons I still don’t understand. He’d wait for the Home Ec teacher to leave and then threaten to strangle me. But mostly I had my friends and things were fine as long as I was comfortable with feeling awkward, which I learned to be. Which is to say, again, that my misery wasn’t social misery.
Some weird kids, they have charisma and can wear their weirdness to the top of the pack (my first boyfriend, Joaquin, was one of these). But the rest of us have to make some choices:
- Pretend to be normal as best you can and hope it sticks (it never does).
- Be weird and say screw ‘em.
Tags: boyfriend, bullies, confidence, education, Erica, giftedness, homeschool, Homeschooling, introversion, introvert, introverted, joaquin, Julia, Madison, my dad, my mom, ninth grade, Noah, values
Connectors
Sep 12, 2008 work work work
Julia made me read the Tipping Point (remember she bought it for me because I was so lazy about reserving it at the library) in part because she wanted me to see that the many many many small things I was doing would actually come together at some point and also because she wanted me to see that I’m a connector.
I love to fix people up, it’s true. I like to introduce people who might like each other or might need to help each other. It’s not all altruistic. Because I’m introverted, I don’t have the energy to keep up with everyone I’d like to keep up with (I also don’t have the time) but if I consolidate my friendships/acquaintanceships, then my friends can help me keep up with each other! Like if I introduce Person X to Person Y and they hit it off, then either of them can let me know how the other one is doing, keep me in the loop, etc. and I won’t feel so guilty that I haven’t seen one or the other in awhile.
I like to throw parties and invite my most disparate friends, too, because I’m a great believer in making mutts out of playgroups. It’s wonderful to have time with only the like-minded folks but it’s invigorating to throw a whole new perspective into the mix now and then. Suddenly you find out that you’re like-minded group has a pocket of people with an interest you didn’t know about. And wham-o, bam-o — you’ve got another interconnected friendship going on.
It’s the part of networking that I like. I’m not so hot at the large group meet-ups (although I’m getting better) but I do like meeting new people and figuring out who I know that maybe they’d like to meet. And when they hit it off? I feel like Madison does when she puts the whole Thomas the Tank Engine floor puzzle together and then dances around the room with satisfaction.
I may not really be a people person but I am a person who likes people and it’s fun to see people I like hit it off.
Edited to add: Rereading the post I linked to above makes me realize how far I’ve come just since March, which inspires me to think how far I’ll go likely by NEXT March. Listen, oh ye introverts among us, if I can do this anyone can.
Tags: friendships, introvert, introverted, Julia, Madison, networking, work, working
Coping mechanisms for introverts
Mar 14, 2008 The Story of My Life
I just had a happy playdate with 3/4 of the Turn Sharp family. If you read her blog you can tell that she is not an introvert, which made me think of this important coping mechanism.
One of the stresses I have as an introvert is a social anxiety that gets hung up on “Oh I can’t believe I said that! I am such an idiot! I should just go stick my head in a bucket and end my miserable life!” (Introverts are sometimes over-dramatic.) But here’s the thing: Other people don’t tend to notice what idiots we are.
Extroverts don’t notice because extroverts (I believe) are pretty forgiving. Lots of extroverts like people in general so they’re already predisposed to like you. They enter social situations happy to be there and to be socializing. They don’t have all that free-floating anxiety. They don’t fret beforehand about all the ways it might go wrong. So there’s a lot of give in socializing with an extrovert.
Other introverts are so anxious themselves that they’re not going to focus on your screw-ups (they’re too worried about their own). I had a meet-up with a clear introvert a few weeks ago and I could tell that anything I said/did was filtering through their defense system anyway so it seemed like a lot of the pressure was off me.
That’s kind of my point in my last post. It’s not that introversion is all in my head (I know I’m hard-wired that way) but a lot of the way it plays out is all in my head. My internal pep talks before social events are usually about this — that no one likes cold networking; that the extroverts will talk to me if I give them an opening; that the introverts are just as (if not more) tense than I am. It’s telling myself: My feelings are true but my interpretation of the situation may not be true. I will probably always feel a little wrecked after social events but I can stop the anxiety before and after by recognizing my wrecked feelings as feelings — not manifestations of disaster.
The other thing I’ve been thinking about is that a lot of this is skill and we can learn skills. I met two guys who both have this incredible ability to remember people’s names and details about their lives. I asked them both how they do it and they both said: HARD WORK. One of them said he actually took a class to learn the techniques. I was a little bummed out because I was hoping they would say, “Oh I was just born this way!” thereby letting me off the hook for not being able to remember anybody’s name ever.
If socializing well is a skill, I can get better at it. It’s like how special ed teachers work with kids who have a learning disability. They don’t try to cure the disability; they try to help students learn how to cope with that disability. Or how people will work with children who have autism to recognize other indicators of emotion since they have trouble recognizing facial expressions and tone. So I think, this may not come easy to me but it can come easier. The more I push myself, the more I can build coping mechanisms and eventually I won’t be as held back by this twitching left eyelid I’ve got going on.
Until then, it’s the chocolate and caffeine. Hey — these things take time.
Tags: coping mechanisms, introversion, introvert, introverted, networking
