Van Posts Sims Stuff

OK ARE YOU EVER IN NEED OF BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS BUT DON’T KNOW WHAT TO READ NEXT?

I present to you, straight from the internet, whichbook:

Here’s how it works: You click the link, and choose four categories and the extent to which these categories matter:

Then click “go” and it’ll come up with a number of books you might like.

DON’T LIKE THE CATEGORIES? NO PROBLEM - see this little thing:

THIS LITTLE THING WILL TAKE YOU TO THIS SLIGHTLY LARGER THING WHERE YOU CAN CHOOSE A BOOK BASED ON THE FOLLOWING:

YOU NOW HAVE NO EXCUSE TO NOT BE READING SOMETHING BECAUSE WHATEVER YOU WANT THIS SITE WILL COME UP WITH IT.

These are the victims of the MSD school shooting. Take a few minutes out of your day to read about them. They deserve to be remembered. 

Alyssa Alhadeff: 

Alyssa was 15 years old.

She played soccer and was on the track team.

Alyssa was said to have been introverted and very close to her family and friends.

She was a straight A student.

Alyssa attended a jewish sleep away camp during the summer.

Scott Beigel: 

Scott was a geography teacher at the school.

He is pictured above with the cross country team he coached.

He was killed after unlocking the door to let students into his classroom to hide from the shooter. 

Scott was also a counsellor at a summer camp in Pennsylvania.

Jaime Guttenberg:

Jaime was 17 years old.

She loved dancing and was in a local competitive dance program.

She was described as being kind-hearted and having a contagious smile.

Her facebook page has been memorialized as tributes pour out.

Martin Duque: 

Martin was a 14 year old freshman.

His brother described him as very funny, outgoing, caring and very sweet.

His family is devastated at the loss of Martin, he was very loved.

A gofundme page was set up by his brother, to help cover the funeral costs. The link is: https://www.gofundme.com/32z7etk

Nicholas Dworet:

Nicholas was 17 years old.

He was given a swimming scholarship to the University of Indianapolis.

He also played for the school water polo team.

Nick aspired to be in the 2020 olympics.

He was described as being very charismatic and a very likeable guy.

Aaron Feis:

Aaron was a football coach at the school.

Aaron was shot and killed, shielding students from bullets.

He was also reported to have been a security guard.

He was loved by students at the school.

Chris Hixon:

Chris was the school’s athletics director.

He was described as the kind of person who would do anything for anyone.

He had a son with special needs who followed him everywhere.

Luke Hoyer:

Luke was 15 years old.

He loved playing basketball.

He is described as being very laid back, never causing any trouble.

His family is devastated, saying that “it doesn’t feel real”.

He was very happy-go-lucky. Never getting upset.

Cara Loughran: 

Cara was 14 years old.

She was a great student.

She loved the beach.

Her family says that her death is “too horrible to be processed”.

Gina Montalto:

Gina was 14 years old. 

She was a member of her school’s marching band.

Her mother described her as being smart, caring, and brightening any room she entered. 

Joaquin Oliver:

Joaquin was 17 years old.

He was born in Venezuela, officially becoming an American citizen on January 17th.  

He was described as being extroverted and always trying to make new friends.

Alex Schachter:

Alex was 14 years old. 

He was a member of his school’s marching band. 

He was described as being a great kid, full of love and life. 

Carmen Schentrup:

Carmen was 16 years old.

She was a national merit scholar semifinalist. 

A family member described her as being the smartest 16 year old they had ever met. 

Alaina Petty:

Alaina was 14 years old.

She was part of her school’s JROTC program.

She devoted countless hours to volunteering.

Alaina was described as vibrant, determined, and loved by all.

Meadow Pollack:

Meadow was 18 years old.

She planned to attend Lynn University next year.

These bother me sometimes.

Some people’s brains and nervous systems are wired for better hand-eye coordination. Some people’s brains and nervous systems are wired for better pattern recognition. Or translations of audio input. Or whatever. 

What this does is combine with @jelloapocalypse‘s EXTREMELY WELL-OBSERVED COMMENT (If someone says they “never practice” it’s probably because they like doing the skill and see it as a fun use of their time instead of “practice”.) in a way that can be both invisible and give this kind of person a massive leg up while being really discouraging to someone who doesn’t have that wiring. 

It doesn’t get to the actual original comic’s level of “oh I just started here”. But let’s take two people called Riley and Kennedy, and we’ll do singing, since that’s what I teach. 

Riley and Kennedy have exactly the same kind of background: parents who listen to the radio sometimes, the usual social stuff around popular music of whatever genre, etc, but no formal training. Neither of them sings in a church choir, neither of them falls into a formal disability category, whatever. 

The first time Riley shows up in my studio and we sing a really simple song I use as a diagnostic, she gets it mostly right. She can follow the tune; she can hear pitch, and it takes very little work for her to chivvy her voice into matching that pitch as long as there’s not something pulling her off. (In other words: as long as I’m singing the same notes as her and playing them on the piano, and as long a she can hear both herself and those notes). 

For Riley the lesson is really fun and validating and she goes home and sings along to her own music for a while and comes back next week with six songs she wants to try learning. And most of her lessons are like that: pretty easy positive feedback. That means Riley “practices” a lot in exactly the way @jelloapocalypse describes, even if she doesn’t think she’s actually practicing (that is, sitting down to sing the songs we’re working on together in a systematic way) at all. 

In contrast, the first time Kennedy comes to my studio, she struggles. It’s harder for her to hear the difference between notes, and it’s much harder for her to make her voice actually match the pitch she wants to sing at. When we pull out the diagnostic tune, she mostly manages to drone a few clusters of semi-tones, and while she can hear that she’s Off, it’s actually very hard for her to tell HOW she’s off, or what she should do to correct it. 

In most cases, for Kennedy, lessons - and in fact the overall experience of singing - is not fun. It’s not validating. It’s a whole process of Not Being Good, of Doing Things Wrong, and given the way humans are often in casual situations being laughed at. When Kennedy goes home she doesn’t sing along with any music she plays: she keeps her lips pressed together and at best enjoys other people singing (and maybe feels envious and demeaned because she can’t do it). 

Now the thing is, the practical “skill” difference for Riley and Kennedy here at the beginning is minimal. But the Rileys will tend (if they like what they’re doing) to ROCKET UP THE SKILL LEVEL, because of the “practice is fun so it’s just the thing I do” - because there is always a bunch of validation and positive reinforcement in the act of doing whatever it is, be it doodling or singing or math. 

The Kennedys won’t. In fact if they’re not lucky enough to have a good teacher, and one who can put a lot of this into perspective for them, they will tend to be inhibited. The worst time is when a Riley and a Kennedy are friends and sign up to learn together, and Riley takes off and Kennedy’s left sitting there feeling like she’s somehow Deeply Flawed. 

 And in fact the whole Doctrine of “It’s Just About How Hard You Work” will in and of itself become part of what inhibits them, because they will watch the Rileys - and even the Annas, Anna in this metaphor being the Totally Normal Student who never really exists - grasp things faster than they do, even if they ARE working hard. And this will HAPPEN. They will watch this reality happen in front of them … and then people say to them “oh, it’s all about how hard you work, dear.” And it’s like being gaslit. (Well, to be fair: it IS being gaslit, just without malice intended on the part of the people doing it.) 

And that message is horribly horribly toxic: here Kennedy is, and she IS working hard, but she’s still not progressing as fast as Riley or Anna no matter what she does! But it’s All About Hard Work, right? So that must mean that no matter how hard she THINKS she’s working, she’s actually just lazy, or doesn’t want it enough. It’s clearly a moral flaw in her. 

I actually have, personally, really good luck with teaching the Kennedys because I literally have this conversation with them when they come to my studio. I actually outright tell them: firstly, anyone who has working vocal chords can sing. Anyone who has working vocal chords and the ability to distinguish audio pitch can even sing on key in tune! But some people have an easy time learning this and some people have a hard time, and sometimes which it is has some relationship to, say, “early exposure to music” or whatever but sometimes it seems to be utterly fucking random - pure luck of the draw. 

You CAN SING. The capability is there. And if you want to we will find out how to make it happen. It might not happen as fast as for some other person, it might take more work, it might take more care, but that’s okay: that’s not your fault, that doesn’t mean you’re NOT working hard, but it does mean that here at the beginning we do things like recalibrate victories, we make your progress about YOU, not about Riley or Anna. 

But I’m also not going to gaslight you or make you feel like you’re either delusional or somehow especially So Terrible You Don’t Fit In The Rest Of The World: sure, I’ve got some Riley-types who walk in here, noodle around, and we go on to Art Songs. They exist. 

So what? Tall people exist. People with broad shoulders exist. People with dark hair exist. Physical embodiment and neurology hand out luck of the genetic roulette with no interest in outcomes. If you’re born blonde, it’s always going to take more work for you to have brown hair than someone born with brown hair, but much like dyeing your hair to match what you want, we can train the muscles of your voice and the neural pathways for hearing to do what you want. 

The differences between Rileys and Kennedys are very small. If Riley didn’t discover she liked singing and Kennedy worked at it for years then no, Riley would not “start out” as good as Kennedy is after those years. And you can be Riley and if you DON’T do the fucking work, the Annas of the world especially will blast past you and leave you in the dust. 

But on the other hand the Rileys get this wonderful cycle of positive reinforcement that does often start from a place of their coincidental physical embodiment giving them a slight leg up. And pretending that’s not the case does a big disservice to the Kennedys. 

Especially when kids are grouped into an activity by age and the people who find it easy are bored and don’t ever learn how to work at it properly, all the while being told that you’re only as good as the amount of work that you put in.

And some of the ones that didn’t make that list have some serious asterisks next to them.