one of the dominant affects I remember experiencing throughout school was impatience. I once listened to a national seminar about local creole languages aimed at students in the local equivalent of sixth form/high school, and because the seminar itself was very curated & simplistic (read: sterile) the Q&A seemed redundant & replicated questions which had long been discussed in local academia & by linguistics academics. think something like, “does the mix of languages included in a creole language or the ethnic background of people who speak that creole affect how that creole is perceived (low class vs middle class)?” and it seemed so terribly obvious that the answer was yes, there’s already research about it, I thought it was a waste that the seminar was artificially kneecapping its scope by pretending that linguistics research was an empty ground or terra nullius around [local creole]. like cmon, open the gates and point the students to the wealth of journal articles already written about this - then we can talk about much more insightful and interesting questions instead of circling around old topics.
but: on a personal level, I don’t think the frequent impatience I felt indicates that I was smart or perceptive. if anything I’m resolute that I really am unintelligent by many metrics and quite dumb once you get to know me; it’s more about the impoverished style of indoctrination you get in schools. more about how formal state-endorsed schooling is always maddeningly hegemonic and biased and the kneecapping is the point. they don’t want you to probe too deeply! the point is about how live debates & complex problems around linguistics are considered off-limits for students.
and even more still: it’s all well and easy for me to disclaim my “””intelligence””” when I’m speaking from the position of grad school. those are rich words. but my insistence that I’m average and mundane goes hand in hand with me acknowledging that I’ve gotten where I am now mainly due to three things: legacy, luck, and largesse (I.e., wealth & resources). there’s little that’s inherently special about me in terms of intellectual finesse. and that’s a good thing!
