Mirror, Mirror on the Bull***t

The other day, a conversation with a close friend turned to her professor's reaction to her statement that she is, at the moment, a middling artist.  She's a game design major; it's actually relevant, and, moreover, it's true.  She has a better grasp of anatomy and composition than many of her classmates, and best of all there's actual concept behind her art; on the other hand, she has a lot of room for improvement, and that's a-ok.  She's in her twenties, drawing has never been a major focus of her life, and even those for whom it is will, in fact, always have room for improvement.  

That's the thing about life.  You keep changing til you die, unless you really dig in your heels, and even that will change you.  Moreover, in specific, learned skills, dissatisfaction is an impetus, perhaps the impetus.  Some people think they're bad at ______ right now, and some of them really are!  Some of them think they're all right at _________ right now.  Either way, the common factor for people who improve at _______ is that their answer to this is to take it as a challenge to learn, practice, grow and experiment.

That is very much the context in which she couched "I'm a middling artist, at the moment."  See?  Even the phrase 'at the moment' is a cue, here!  How, you ask, did her professor take this? After all, it's a professor's job to teach their students, both the skills set forth on the syllabus and, tacitly but perhaps most importantly of all, those of critical thinking, self-assessment, awareness of context, and determination.  A professor should be glad to see such honest introspection paired with motivation to improve.

So, of course, this professor wigged out at her about being down on herself, the perils of negative self-talk, and the fact that pessimism will get you nowhere.  Hours later, when we talked, this was still getting under her skin and, annoyance being a communicable disease, proceeded to get under mine.  Since we're reasonable people and not intellectual masochists at all, we proceeded to pick apart the whys and wherefores, and this is what we decided.

There is basically no way to win at self-assessment, socially speaking.  It's kind of disappointing*, but it's true.  People bandy about the phrase "confidence is sexy,"** but a display of confidence, especially from a woman - the sector of society most pressured to be sexy, which is in itself major ranting material, because I have opinions on everything ever - will get you branded arrogant (and being, or wanting to be, sexy will earn you the name of slut, just as abstinence from or disinterest in sexiness will have people calling you a prude.)  For guys, it's a bit less fraught but you still run a real risk of people thinking you're a puffed-up macho pain in the butt.

Conversely...well, look at my friend's conversation with her professor.  The modern US educational system places such emphasis on self-esteem over respect - for self or others - and on standardized testing over critical thinking or practised skill that an honest "I'm all right, but I could be better and am working hard on getting that way" nets not praise for honesty and concrete, helpful questions on how the other individual plans upon improvement, but instead worry over their self-image.  

Terms such as "fair," "middling," and "average" have become perceived not as terms of forthright assessment but of negative judgement and as such, conversely, actually hinder improvement by, depending on context and individual, leading either to actually abysmal self-assessment or to over-inflated ego, neither of which provides motivation for improvement.  This leads to humility contests, where the self-esteem scale is bent right around on itself and starts eating its own tail and, since auto-cannibalism provides pretty lousy sustenance, starts fishing for compliments.  The thing about that is that all the energy expended upon passive-aggression could instead be funnelled into actual self-improvement, ideally with some left over for giving and receiving constructive criticism from others in the same or similar fields.

It's a bit horrifying that anything so key as honesty and moderation should carry such insulting connotations.  I don't really have a strong cincher or a call to action on this one.  It's more a cross between grumbling and, hackneyed as this sounds, raising awareness.  Hey, people - if there's something you care about, and you're both aware that you can improve and working on doing so, good on you.  If you know you're good at something, awesome!  Own up to that.  Own up to having room for improvement, too.  You're awesome and anyone who gives you crap for either is the one with the problem.

*For a value of kind of disappointing ranging from what it says on the tin to blindingly frustrating.

**Rant coming soon, to a word-nerd blog near you!