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Thursday, March 10, 2011

When Smart Girls Cease to Be Smart

I recently watched Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service.  (I highly recommend anything by him by the way.) For those of you less familiar with the movie, it's about a witch who has to spend a training year starting sometime after she turns 13.  Kiki sets off and ends up in a town near the ocean where she sets up a delivery service and has a number of setbacks.  And amidst the discouragement, she forgets how to fly.

And thus the movie raises a good issue: What do you do when something that has always come natural to you is now something you are incapable of?

I have a friend who recently suffered a mild concussion in a pick-up soccer game.  When she admitted this to her professor, he chastised her: "If you were going to be a professional soccer player, I think you would have made it by now.  Meanwhile, your greatest asset - your brain - should not be coming into contact with a soccer ball."

So, here we have this case.  Graduate student = smart girl (I'm not saying all smart girls are graduate students nor that all graduate students are smart girls but in this specific case, yes) And so, greatest asset = brain.

But what if being smart is no longer natural?  What if said smart girl struggles for hours and hours and hours and can't seem to get anything out of her brain?

Of course we must modify it.  A smart girl isn't just smart; she's hardworking.  I mean, that is what distinguished her back as an undergraduate.  She spent large amounts of time on homework and in understanding the material and getting the appropriate help to understand the material she can't.  This included making social, physical, and emotional sacrifices in order to learn and master the subject matter.

And now, she can't bring herself to do it.  Instead, she spends hours learning new languages and studying new cultures.  She finds she would rather talk to new people and ask them questions and pick their brains rather than pick her own.

What's a girl to do?

Because its only when she ceases to be smart that she realizes that she has placed her entire self-image on the idea that she is smart.  Sadly, so has everyone else.  But now that she has lost faith in her ability to be smart, she feels like she is just fooling everyone around her.  Overwhelmed by this discrepancy between what she is and what she is perceived as, she feels this need to correct everyone's misconceptions.  However, all attempts at honesty simply are waved off as, "You're just saying that."  Now, she's strapped with the idea of being smart AND humble.

Is this girl living a complete lie?  What actually makes a person smart?  And once a girl ceases to be smart, can she ever go back?

2 comments:

  1. Why do I feel like this might not be a story about 'a friend'? :) I love the way you can nail things I think and feel right on the head Erin.
    Who know? Your friend might find something inside her greater than what she thought was there before...and it might turn out that she is still smart after all.

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  2. Oh, E.M.R., is it not a little disturbing that, upon watching Kiki's Delivery Service, we independently came away chewing on the same mental conundrum? You've taken words straight from my brain!

    I wish I had solid answers, but perhaps we should take the artist lady's advice in the movie: take a deep breath, sit back, and wait for inspiration. You see, I'm personally starting to wonder if we can no more force ourselves into activity than we can force anyone else to do that which they do not want to do. Thus the need for inspiration and the inner drive to do what is required. Perhaps we can only be patient?

    Oh, and perhaps now is as good a time as any to destroy the link between academic success and perceived self worth. The former was never meant to define the latter. That was simply an invention of our own making.

    Okay, I'll stop talking now...this is why I don't comment often, by the way. I seem incapable of keeping it short! Anyway, good luck. Jiayou!

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