The Introvert Excuse

This posting is inspired partially by a recent episode of TLC's What Not to Wear. Normally, I feel for the guests. I feel bedraggled; they feel bedraggled, but then they cry with relief when they finally look pretty. There is hope for us all. It reminds me to curl my hair every morning. But every once in awhile, they make over someone who does not want to be made over and makes the whole show about how contrary they can be. They talk back to Stacy and Clinton and reject every suggestion.

The recent episode in question featured actress Shannon Elizabeth. I can only hope she was acting on this show. I hope she's not that bitchy in real life. Maybe they told her to be difficult for ratings; after all, the recruiting of B-list celebrities seems to have been a last-ditch effort to save the show which, it has now been announced, is in its last season. 

The whole time, Shannon scorned suggestions and claimed that she needed to dress in understated ripped jeans and cotton hoodies because she was shy and didn't want a lot of attention. She used introversion as an excuse. An excuse for bad behavior. 

She petulantly told hairstylist Ted that she couldn't wear the new hairstyle because she "couldn't see." Tuck it behind your ear, or use the miraculous invention of the bobby pin. Mostly, don't be so ungrateful. All of us at home on our couches watching this show would love to have a makeover. 

Now, I may be conflating introversion and humility, but it has been my experience that most introverts, because they are reflective and thoughtful, are usually quite considerate of others. People like Shannon's-persona-on-this-show are just throwing out shyness as an excuse. After all, these days, we are conditioned to pity anyone who can throw out the idea that they are "different" from something someway. 

So a person who doesn't understand what it is to truly be shy claims shyness as their particular difference, with the presumption that this difference entitles them to disregard basic civility and kindness. 

I've had students pull this trick. Just this December, a student angrily e-mailed me. His grade was on the A/B border, and I had chosen the B. One reason I gave him as to why I went with a B was that he didn't participate in class. He retorted in a generally arrogant e-mail that I was penalizing him for being shy. A truly shy person wouldn't have had the audacity to send a professor a rude e-mail, but because he's not really shy at all, he couldn't see that. 

And then there was the fifteen-year-old girl back in the high school teaching days. Her mom called me to tell me that she suffered from anxiety, so she could not be expected to do the oral presentation. I wondered where her anxiety was when she made inappropriate jokes about my dating life. 

Some students, of course, have legitimate anxiety, depression, and shyness that interfere with their abilities to perform. To these students, I say, "Join the club," and not sarcastically either. I've been a longtime sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I know it's hard. Most professors probably can sympathize with these students; after all, someone who spends as much time researching obscure topics as we do probably has some quirks, if not outright mental illnesses. But your own suffering is not an excuse to disrespect others. 

Introversion is not egoism. Sure, we focus on our own thoughts, but often, those thoughts are about others, about issues, about the world at large. We focus on our thoughts, but we should not be self-obsessed. People who don't see this distinction are the ones who use introversion as an excuse. 

"Don't smile until Christmas."

That's something older teachers love to tell younger teachers. I appreciated any advice on getting taken seriously when I started out teaching, as it's hard for seventeen-year-olds to view you as a real authority figure when you're twenty-two. Early on, one colleague even told me I needed to be "more of a bitch."

However, those comments were actually the exception rather than the rule. More often, new teachers are encouraged to fear that one wrong move of theirs will destroy a student's self-esteem for life. My master teacher (by the way, I hear they call them "cooperating teachers" now; ha, ha, if by "cooperating" you mean planning lessons with me ONE time and then getting paid to take notes on all my flaws while I teach your class for the next six weeks, then, yes, I had a cooperating teacher) told me up front: better to grade a student too high than too low. But maybe that was more a fear of parent complaints than of crushing children's hearts (if by children's hearts you mean seventeen-year-olds' hearts).

Then there was the time that I had the students doing some ridiculous, contrived game that I had come up with because talking about literature wasn't active enough learning, and they knew it was stupid and weren't participating. So, up there I stood, waiting. Finally, one boy felt sorry for me, and volunteered an answer. We moved on, but after class the master teacher berated me for not giving him more positive feedback; after all, he had saved my ass. First, student teaching is so humiliating that you get inured to that feeling pretty early on, and I think I would have lived had he not jumped in and given an answer out of pity. Second, when a bunch of students don't give answers, how did it become the teacher whose ass needs to be saved? Third, I didn't say anything negative; I probably just said 'ok,' because his answer was right. Just because I didn't lavish praise upon this kid, I was now a meanie.

So now, just being straightforward or neutral is mean. If you're not overly encouraging, or if you are quiet or subtle, you must be angry or derisive. Wesley Yang in "Paper Tigers" wrote about a similar phenomenon in a different context. He interviewed a young, Asian man who said that his friends asked him, "Dude, are you mad?" in clubs or other social situations. He felt he was merely being neutral, but because he wasn't acting like an over-the-top, smiley big-talker, he must be angry. That's how I think a lot of new teachers are made to feel. We know that we could be humiliated at any moment (anyone else been told to "suck and swallow" by a fifteen-year-old?), but if we're not as nurturing as kindergarten teachers on the first day of school, we're self-esteem crushers.

This pressure came up recently in a conversation with a colleague of mine. He said that he finds himself being excessively positive as a way to compensate for his introversion. Bottom line: If you're reserved, you'll be perceived as mean, so you have to act extra nice!

Ed school scared me so much that I once asked a counselor for his home phone number in case I read anything questionable while grading after hours because I was so paranoid about my status as a mandatory reporter. Our professors regaled us with stories of things we could do that could get us sued. At an orientation for one of my jobs in a coveted suburban district they told us that should any of us get ourselves dismissed, it might end up in the suburban newspaper. Gasp! Scandal!

In this type of social climate, could you blame twenty-two-year-old me for being worried when my master teacher wanted to show Dead Poets' Society? What if it sent out a bad message? What if it upset someone? Oh, silly me; I didn't realize that movies don't crush souls--only teachers do. So, after I voiced my concerns to her privately, she went on to say, after the movie finished, to the whole class, "So, you guys know that just because there's a suicide in this movie it doesn't mean we want you to go kill yourselves, right?" I can still hear the sarcasm dripping (the cliche works, so I'm leaving it in) in her voice.

You know, if a movie won't make someone commit suicide, I doubt that a D will either.

Herein is the paradox of being a young teacher: people view you in two extreme ways. You're treated as if you have the power to destroy lives or as if you're a nobody. Both feel pretty bad. Maybe that's the reason new teachers don't smile until Christmas.

Mindy Kaling's book

Recently finished Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, and got a lot of laughs. I particularly loved the section heading entitled, "I Forget Nothing: A Sensitive Child Looks Back." She describes keeping a list of her favorite foods with her at all times in case someone should ask. I love a defense against awkward small talk. And oh, how many of us shy types have mentally bullet-pointed an awkward conversation, or worse, not mentally but literally written out a list of things to say?

A lot of people think Facebook is a shallow soul-killer, but I love what it's done for small talk, which introverts tend to dread. I can get the information of small talk but without the face-to-face awkwardness and immediate need to respond. I can peek into others' lives without having to keep a conversation going. Like.

Good point by good friend A.J.

"I know you know this, but not all extroverts are 'content-free,' as you put it. We can be thoughtful and sincere and sensitive..."

Touche!

I don't want my students punching each other.

That should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. If you're a teacher, you know why I feel compelled to offer disclaimers such as that.

However, since no punches were actually thrown in the incident I'm about to describe, and I can therefore now look at it humorously, I'd like to tell this end-of-semester story.

The only name I can think of for the phenomenon to attribute this incident to is "group-work rage." Like road rage, but for group work. If you're reading this blog, you were most likely at one time or another the smart, diligent kid in the group who got stuck picking up the slack for one or more not-so-concerned members of some group you had to do a project with in your K-university experience. You know the frustration of this game of academic chicken. They know you will crack and do their work for them, so they wait you out and do nothing. And you look like a chump, but what can you do? Tattle on them? It might temporarily feel good to rat them out, knowing the teacher might lower their grade, but you'd probably also feel like a coward for going behind the person's back.

In short, you probably really wanted to punch them. And one of my students almost did. After a sort of calling-out that involved some profanity, the high achiever actually asked the student whose work was "eh" to "take it outside." To the academically "eh" student's credit, he was mature enough to refuse. The frustrated high achiever immediately apologized and I definitely had long talks with both parties.

But on the plus side, the high achiever had the guts to tell the other student to his face that his work was not as good as the rest's. That's something, especially if you, as I do, have memories of the cattiness of some suburban high achievers who order what my eleventh-grade English teacher called their "mommy-lawyers" to call to complain about whatever displeases them at school, or who, in the wake of earning a B, plot in the hallways to get their teachers fired.

The recent incident's high achiever was not like that. He was a hard-working kid who came to office hours for help revising every essay. I know that he works extensive hours outside the classroom.

Because of that, and maybe because I am a super-old-fashioned person, some part of me was impressed that this high achiever was actually willing to take a few hits to uphold the quality of work in my class. There's something about a man willing to fight for his honor, for my honor.

So, to this would-be, knight in shining book-armor, I say that you that you must not act on your urge to punch your group-mates. But I appreciate the sentiment behind it. You literally stood up for smart kids doing group work everywhere.

I've also been watching a lot of E! News.

I'm not too proud to admit it.

I also confess that I've become an avid follower of E! News host Giuliana Rancic's reality show, Giuliana and Bill. Yep, I've been following the whole saga of failed IVF, breast cancer, and now baby Duke's arrival.

Aside from the obvious draws of such a show (winking smiley face), I think I like following Giuliana's story for another reason as well: I like that a girl with a Masters degree gets to wear designer gowns and is routinely followed around by a bevy of girls (hair/makeup/personal assistants) who would probably have made fun of her in middle school, what with her scoliosis and Italian accent. (I learned all this from her E! True Hollywood Story.)

So when she showed all of said assistants her pretty new house, and asked, "Sick, right?!" I was all like, "You go, smart girl!"

I need a band.

Now that vacation is here, I'm on my natural sleep schedule, which means I get to watch all my favorite TV friends without DVR: Chelsea, Conan, Jay, Jimmy. As I watch all my favorite late-night shows, it occurs to me that I want the kind of production support that they have:

First, I would like a warm-up guy to get my audience in a good mood before I get there.

Second, I would like a make-up touch-up person to run up and fix my lipstick every ten minutes.

Third, I would like a band to provide regular breaks for me so that my audience can stay in a good mood while I get my make-up fixed. 

Neil Postman laments how everything, including education, is compared to television, and how we should immediately stop this, but what if he's wrong? Maybe education should be treated MORE like a TV show. After all, TV gets all this money and respect and it allows them to put on some amazing productions. Imagine how much I could do if I had a personal assistant!