I am heavily involved in a not obscure performance art. And I don’t mean to brag, but I don’t suck at it. I’m certainly not The Best but I know this something I can do and do well. This is literally the only thing I’ve ever done where I’ve not had imposter syndrome about it.
Right off the bat, the lack of imposter syndrome differentiates me from many of my peers. Despite being hired and paid to do this work, despite getting training, despite networking and hustling… somehow, these people still have imposter syndrome and I don’t understand why.
I had the opportunity, recently, to perform in front of many of my peers. The performance was just me, after which I would receive feedback. Usually the professor/coach/instructor is able to give me some actionable feedback that I can use to get better. But the vast majority of the time, I only receive compliments.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I don’t… really… want the compliments. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy receiving them as they validate my continuing desire to participate in this performance art. But I ALSO want actionable feedback.
Telling me what I did well was great, but I also need to know what I didn’t do well and how not-good it was. This information tells me what I need to work on to improve and how hard I need to focus on it.
I value this aspect of my life, a great deal. But, and this is where it gets… sticky, if people only tell me that my performance was good, I add it to my back pocket and then move on because ultimately, the feedback isn’t actively helping me get better.
This trend, I think, started in school and because of the way our educational system is built, the system itself doesn’t push or challenge kids that might need it. As a result, kids that are more talented are trained to be complacent.
Unsurprisingly, I’m probably not conveying this well. I think equity is incredibly important. I think not teaching to the test and certifications is incredibly important. The way the education system is, currently, is teaching children information and how to parrot it back. You have some dedicated teachers who strive to for comprehension in their students. These teachers actively want their students to learn but also to understand and think critically about it.
By teaching to the test, we are only making sure everyone is at the same very specific starting and very specific ending point. But they aren’t necessarily able to apply that very specific knowledge to practical applications.
Example: I was an average student throughout school (primary and beyond). But, I was lazy. I could, without fail, start a paper the day or two before it was due and get an above average grade on it. Even IF there were structures in place to make sure a paper was at different stages at different times, the peer evaluations that I received were crap. My peers would hope I get their paper to evaluate because I’d mark the entire paper up — not telling them that they suck but rather pointing out where things were rough or awkward and suggesting ways to change or adjust it. And inevitably, as a result of my edits, their papers got better. Cool.
But mine didn’t. Ever. All the feedback I ALWAYS received is that “it was good” with zero notes or critique. (Do you see the problem for me, here?)
Peer edits/reviews/evals have been almost universally unhelpful, for me.
In some things, sure, I don’t care. I just want to hit the bar to get by but have no desire to put in effort beyond that. But when I care about something, getting the same feedback everytime with nothing critical of me or my work… just… kind of soils my desire to do better and become complacent.
Throughout secondary school, I would write papers the night before and get above average and even excellent grades from it. And in all honesty, there was a small part of me that hoped, everytime, one of my professors would call me on my bullshit. I HOPED that a professor would talk to me and ask me wtf I handed in. It was crap and we both knew I could have done better. But they didn’t. Not one did. So I stopped pushing myself, because why should I?
Honestly, that was my main takeaway from primary and secondary education.
So as an adult, I am able to reflect on this behavior and actually admit that I could and should have done better, but the system isn’t set up for kids who are exceptional to be exceptional.
In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s set up to cripple kids who are exceptional. Because it’s uncouth to call oneself exceptional, even if you mean it in its original definition — which means above average. It’s also discouraged in today’s culture to raise one kid above another within a school setting. And yet, we still do it in a small way.
I know I’m writing in circles and that this doesn’t exactly make sense.
So let’s boil it down to say this: I have been trained to not do better than average because there is no push or challenge to continue improving. As an adult, I see this and I hate this for me. I love this performance art and want to continue to improve. How do I do that when 9 out of 10 people tell me simply “it was good!”?
I want to do better. I want to learn and grow. But in order to do that, I need a teacher of this art to actually be critical of me. And there are far fewer teachers than there are students.
