"you can do better...."
I am having a devil of a time knowing when I've done enough research and reading for a particular piece I might be writing.
I'm an incredible perfectionist. I know where this comes from, too: overly critical mother, well-meaning teachers (who didn't know about over-critical mother), and insincere employers.
When we're young, teachers often will try to encourage us to improve when they believe in us--when they believe we really can do better then the average student. In my case, I was, for the most part, in accelerated classes already, and never saw a reason to keep pushing myself.
It also didn't matter if I went beyond accellerated because I'd been informed fairly early on, by my mother, that going to college was out of the question....even though I was in college prep classes and was often berated for not being at the top of the academic heap.
What was the point when I would be going out into the job market, and competing for the same jobs, with people who were average joes and janes?
As I discovered later in life, if one is too bright for the average-level job, most employers will be a bit suspect of one's overqualifications and be more inclined not to hire. Why should they hire someone who may excell at the menial job and possibly threaten theirs?
When I got into the job market, it was rare when I was told I was doing a good job. Often, on performance reviews, I was told I could do better. How or why was never the issue. What was the issue was my attitude and inability to apply myself--which were always in need of adjustment or lacking in some other socially acceptable way.
I later discovered that these particular reasons were nothing more than ruses for not wanting to promote or to give adequate raises. Employers will often engage in the subtle subterfuge of undermining an employee's confidence to keep him/her in the proper place. If made to feel that he/she must reach the pinnacle before advancement, and the pinnacle is never within one's reach, then one will, eventually, cease to reach.
One employer told me that perfect performance reviews were never given to anyone. I later discovered that my co-worker was indeed given a perfect performance review. The notion of no perfect performance reviews is another means of keeping the office pecking order where it should be.
Office performance reviews are often not about performace as much as they are about psychologically manipulating employees to keep the office social order.
So, as I try to make my article better by reading *every* *single* book and article I can on blogging, I find myself overloaded and overwhelmed by the myriad of sources and information. The Internet is indeed wonderful, but we have a glut of information and so many differnet opinions that it's difficult to know which to choose and pick from.
When I took a class on Milton, I made the mistake of quoting a Milton scholar by the name of Stanley Fish. I found out from my (later considered) wonderful Milton prof that there were two schools of scholarly thought on Milton and that one was the right school of thought and the other a more edgy, and thus wrong school of scholarly thought.
That's how I often feel about information I find on the Internet--who are the appropriate sources and who are the fools? When there are so many self-proclaimed "experts," who, then are the real experts?
When I consider these questions, I begin to wonder when I might be able to call myself an expert on something, or if I'm starting too late in life to be an expert on anything. Often, experts start climbing the ladder of expertdom when they are in their 20's and 30's, maintain it into their 40's, and sometime just before 50 can begin to claim the title of expert. In some fields, such as sex or fiction writing, we like young experts--we think that it is actually possible for there to be young people with the requisite life experience and education, two things time can only give one, who could possibly be experts. But that's mostly because it is easier to believe a pretty thin young thing is a sex expert than it is to conceive of the older woman with the look of somebody's mother as a sex expert (when, in fact, sex gets much, much better sometime over 40.) And pop culture seems almost shocked when an "old guy" like, say, Frank McCourt, can come out of no particular MFA program and have his first book win a Pulizer Prize.
So, I wonder if I can be a "blog expert" enough to pull of this article and to work up that film festival blog....If I can be enough of a "blog expert" to make some money at it, or if I need the master's degree in information systems management and a list of other experts who will vouch for me before I can claim the right to ask for money for what I do.
When will I be able to stop pushing myself? When will I stop hearing that over critical mother who wanted an A+ when only A's were given; and that manipulative employer who said no one ever got perfect reviews when it was just me who would not get one....
And when will I finally get to claim expertdom at something other than living a full life...which, in the job market, doesn't seem to amount to very much.
I'm an incredible perfectionist. I know where this comes from, too: overly critical mother, well-meaning teachers (who didn't know about over-critical mother), and insincere employers.
When we're young, teachers often will try to encourage us to improve when they believe in us--when they believe we really can do better then the average student. In my case, I was, for the most part, in accelerated classes already, and never saw a reason to keep pushing myself.
It also didn't matter if I went beyond accellerated because I'd been informed fairly early on, by my mother, that going to college was out of the question....even though I was in college prep classes and was often berated for not being at the top of the academic heap.
What was the point when I would be going out into the job market, and competing for the same jobs, with people who were average joes and janes?
As I discovered later in life, if one is too bright for the average-level job, most employers will be a bit suspect of one's overqualifications and be more inclined not to hire. Why should they hire someone who may excell at the menial job and possibly threaten theirs?
When I got into the job market, it was rare when I was told I was doing a good job. Often, on performance reviews, I was told I could do better. How or why was never the issue. What was the issue was my attitude and inability to apply myself--which were always in need of adjustment or lacking in some other socially acceptable way.
I later discovered that these particular reasons were nothing more than ruses for not wanting to promote or to give adequate raises. Employers will often engage in the subtle subterfuge of undermining an employee's confidence to keep him/her in the proper place. If made to feel that he/she must reach the pinnacle before advancement, and the pinnacle is never within one's reach, then one will, eventually, cease to reach.
One employer told me that perfect performance reviews were never given to anyone. I later discovered that my co-worker was indeed given a perfect performance review. The notion of no perfect performance reviews is another means of keeping the office pecking order where it should be.
Office performance reviews are often not about performace as much as they are about psychologically manipulating employees to keep the office social order.
So, as I try to make my article better by reading *every* *single* book and article I can on blogging, I find myself overloaded and overwhelmed by the myriad of sources and information. The Internet is indeed wonderful, but we have a glut of information and so many differnet opinions that it's difficult to know which to choose and pick from.
When I took a class on Milton, I made the mistake of quoting a Milton scholar by the name of Stanley Fish. I found out from my (later considered) wonderful Milton prof that there were two schools of scholarly thought on Milton and that one was the right school of thought and the other a more edgy, and thus wrong school of scholarly thought.
That's how I often feel about information I find on the Internet--who are the appropriate sources and who are the fools? When there are so many self-proclaimed "experts," who, then are the real experts?
When I consider these questions, I begin to wonder when I might be able to call myself an expert on something, or if I'm starting too late in life to be an expert on anything. Often, experts start climbing the ladder of expertdom when they are in their 20's and 30's, maintain it into their 40's, and sometime just before 50 can begin to claim the title of expert. In some fields, such as sex or fiction writing, we like young experts--we think that it is actually possible for there to be young people with the requisite life experience and education, two things time can only give one, who could possibly be experts. But that's mostly because it is easier to believe a pretty thin young thing is a sex expert than it is to conceive of the older woman with the look of somebody's mother as a sex expert (when, in fact, sex gets much, much better sometime over 40.) And pop culture seems almost shocked when an "old guy" like, say, Frank McCourt, can come out of no particular MFA program and have his first book win a Pulizer Prize.
So, I wonder if I can be a "blog expert" enough to pull of this article and to work up that film festival blog....If I can be enough of a "blog expert" to make some money at it, or if I need the master's degree in information systems management and a list of other experts who will vouch for me before I can claim the right to ask for money for what I do.
When will I be able to stop pushing myself? When will I stop hearing that over critical mother who wanted an A+ when only A's were given; and that manipulative employer who said no one ever got perfect reviews when it was just me who would not get one....
And when will I finally get to claim expertdom at something other than living a full life...which, in the job market, doesn't seem to amount to very much.
posted by Tish Grier at 12:00 PM
1 Comments:
I think half of being an expert is just pure attitude, you know? Thinking of yourself as an expert regardless of how much you know. No one can know it all.
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