Teppotastic

Okay – I’ve been thinking about whether I should make this post here or not. It’ll have nothing at all todo with games, games development, comicbooks, the internet or recreation in any sense. It’s abit of a philosophical waxing and as such doesn’t necessarily fit here. So I leave the decision to you. Beyond the following link will be my post. If you’re interested in learning alittle more perhaps about the man behind the blog then feel free to read it, though please take it in the form it is presented i.e. as personal reflection, of opinions and without intending offense to anyone.

I’m not entirely certain on where to start here, so I’ll start with the events that have precipitated this post.

Afew friends of mine are having some troubles with their courses at the moment. One is tearing himself (we’ll call him Fred) up with worry over the last few weeks and deadlines associated with the end of his course at University level. The other is trying to finish her college education in states, where she is several years behind schedule (due to being home-schooled as she moved around the world during her childhood). We’ll call this girl Jill. Hell, I’ve been through the mill when it comes to formal education so I can empathise with them to some degree. I am, for all intents and purposes, a highly intelligent under-achiever. Due to the way my learning brain is skewed, I have a great deal of difficulty absorbing text-based information, be it textbooks, lecture slides or simple oratory/narration. Which is odd, because my reading and writing skills are pretty spot-on. I’m not author, but I have no problems with spelling and vocabulary. I even have a reasonable grasp of grammar, though you may never believe it to hear me speak The problem is actually so extreme (approximately 12 percentile here aka right at the wrong end of the bell-curve) that it affects my short-term working memory unless I am focused on the task at hand. Conversely, all other areas of my learning brain are top-notch. Above average, usually massively so, with a couple of areas being in the high-90s, bearing in mind the level of accuracy for the Cognitive Processes tests involved here were about 1%. Be that as it may, I scored a respectable but not exemplary 3 As, 3 Bs, 3Cs and 2 Ds at GCSE (exams taken at 16yrs old in a variety of subjects); a somewhat lacklustre B, C, D at A2 (full 2-year A-levels taken 16-18yrs) and an E at AS (a 1-year “half” A-level) levels. This always baffled my teachers as I routinely scored at the top of the list in the various intelligence tests that we did every couple of years at my secondry school.

So that might sound alittle like blowing my own trumpet to some degree but you should understand the degree of frustration that comes with this. I know I’m smart. People around me know I’m smart (and that’s not from me shouting it out all the time, I do not do this as a matter of course). Yet I can never seem to attain the expectations that are placed upon me by my peers, my betters and worst of all, myself.

The one thing I am, is incredibly lucky. Though it was very very late in the game, I did manage to find these things out about my learning brain (with the help of the wonderful support staff at my University), along with pointers on how to approach things in the future. Too late for my degree, alas; and not directly applicable to Fred and Jill. These 2 people are far from stupid, I can understand their frustration. Fred’s brain works alittle like mine (but not so extreme), but both of them have in common one terribly important feature. They both have had, or still do lack a degree of faith in themselves.

I’m lucky again, it seems. I was a very shy child, naturally an introvert. But through circumstance and alittle self-training, I have nurtured myself into someone who is relatively confident, has that supposedly all-important “can do” attitude (for the most part anyways, just don’t ask me to stop eating chocolate ), someone who can lead a group, mediate between people, confront problems and is quite happy standing up in front of thousands of people or afew respected peers and giving some form of talk. This puts me in good stead, for if only my grades spoke for myself I would truly be doomed.

This aside, the issue of self-confidence is a very important one. For instance, I used to adore Mathematics. It went hand-in-hand with my love of the Sciences, especially Physics (which has never left me), right up until A-level. I had even petitioned the school to allow myself and afew other students to take a “Further Mathematics” course. Compressing the original 2yr A-level into 1 year and doing another 2yr A-level in Mathematics in the 2nd year. This all went horribly wrong when they brought in the worst kind of teacher (indeed the worst actual teacher) that I have ever had the misfortune to meet, let alone be supposedly taught by. In 1 week, this teacher absolution annihilated all confidence I had left in whatever academic abilities I was struggling to maintain (I had no idea I had any kind of learning difficulty at this time and had only myself to blame for the years preceding and another 4 after this). I was effectively broken. I turned from Mathematics with only a form of hate in my heart for several years. With alittle practice, alot of maturity and the wonders of hindsight I have since regained some of that joy and some of that confidence in certain aspects of my academic life.

But I have noticed, time and time again that the system of education that we have maintained for thousands of years (through studying written texts and such) is failing more and more people. The worst part of it is, it seems to fail the best of us, by the greatest margins. I’ve worked with some pretty smart people at University, people who far excel me in technical ability and from time to time they’ve gotten stuck or got into some kind of fugue over their work. More often than not, it just takes alittle talk about it, break it down alittle and afew simple statements of encouragement. But encouragement isn’t really the right word. They are more statements of faith. Faith in their ability to succeed. For an awful lot of people that is all it takes. “You will get through this/work this out”. Not “I’m sure you’ll work it out” or “It’ll come to you”. You Will. Truly amazing how much power alittle faith has.

This got me thinking about some musings I’ve had in the past about religion (uh-ohes! yes, this blogger is going there) and such. Alittle background would be appropriate here. When I was younger (around 10 or 11 and for afew years after that) I went to sunday service/school at a Trinity Methodist Chapel. I didn’t consider myself to be religious, I don’t really recall what ideas I had about God at the time. My family isn’t religious, I might add. That eventually stopped (though I still feel the need to enter a church or cathedral on occasion – cathedrals fascinate me incidentally, but that’s a story for another time) and some years later I was madly in love with a girl who though not religious herself, had a pastor for a father and indeed both her parents were missionaries. I’d been through my atheist phase by then and described myself as agnostic, as I still do to this day. They weren’t initially happy that I wasn’t a believer but they came to grips with that as they got to know me. I’m not sure if they intended this but I developed a great respect for religion from knowing them. Religions were alittle abstract to me before then, certainly complicated and dangerous at times. Here I must clarify; it is not a religion that I find deserving of respect, it is the Faith behind such endeavours that is truly amazing. It occurred to me, afew years after that relationship had run it’s course and I was well into my University degree, that it takes alittle Faith to inspire us to greatness. It might be Great Good or Great Evil, that is ultimately upto us, but it’s the action of faith that leads us there. Faith in a God or Gods, in spirits, past-lives, non/deterministic reality or probably most importantly ourselves. I maintain a faith in Humanity. It is an extension of the believe I maintain in and of myself, that I am capable of getting through whatever comes my way. That whatever happens, however the course of my life may change, that it will all work out for the best. Or at least not as bad as it could have been

So if you’ve read all of this, I firstly congratulate you. I’ve been very wary of blogging in the past because I’m not a natural sharer of myself. I worry about sounding abit too egotistical, which does happen from time-to-time. Secondly though, I implore you. I implore you that the next time a friend, collegue or loved one is suffering from a crisis of confidence in themselves, no matter how small, you must instill alittle bit of that confidence back to them. There is very little that we cannot accomplish with alittle determination, alittle graft and alittle confidence.