Letters to the Editor
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Who would have thought
This is so similar to my experience! I am also a high school dropout who is now attending law school. I didn't go to college until I was 25 and had some real work experience under my belt. I aced my classes and graduated Summa Cum Laude with two degrees. I scored really high on the LSAT and thought I would breeze through law school. That's not what happened. I had to learn a new way of thinking and approaching the topics, which was very stressful. My self confidence took a real dive and I felt like an "outsider."
I am in the top 40% of my class. As a student attending the top law school in my state, I don't consider that ranking a failure. Sure, getting mostly Bs would have been very upsetting for me as an undergrad. However, you have to redefine it once you are in law school. All the other students you are competing with are equally smart and also had fabulous ungrad grades. My school only takes the top 4% of students from our state. Thus, I reframe my grades as I am a B student within that group of A students. That's not so bad.
I really appreciate everyone who shared their law school stories and career choices. I always thought I was probably one of only a handful of GED holders that attended law school. Glad to see that I am in good company.
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Not the only impostor
Oh yes, the good old "impostor syndrome." I could have written this letter (except that I am female and am in a field other than law). I too am a high school drop out. I dropped out of high school in what would have been the middle of my senior year, except at that point I had failed so many classes that I was classified as a junior. I too went the community college route, then to a state university where I broke the curve in every class (except for French and Algebra, everyone has their limits) and won admission to a highly competitive graduate school. Long story short- I have a GED and PhD and I am now a university professor.
Like the letter writer, I did not discover I was smart until college. However, "knowing" and "feeling" you are smart are two different things. If you don't FEEL smart, you look around and compare yourself to your peers. It is easy to feel smart in undergraduate school, where the full range of intellectual ability (and motivation) is present. As a university professor, I can tell you that many people who graduate from high school couldn't string a coherent sentence together to save their own life. Grad school (and I assume law school) is another matter. Graduate programs get to pick the cream of the crop. We get to choose the BEST of the curve breakers from schools around the country. In graduate school, there is no such thing as a "normal" distribution and the letter writer should not be ashamed of being "average" in such a rarefied pool of people. Honestly, I was about the middle of the pack in grad school and briefly considered dropping out while I was working on my MA thesis (as did just about everyone at one point or other).
As I said, it is one thing to "know" you are smart and another to "feel" smart. Even though I am by every reasonable measure very successful, old fears of being a loser sometimes seep into consciousness. It usually happens when I have screwed up something or failed to live up to some standard. I think almost everyone feels this way at some time of another. I once asked a successful colleague when he stopped feeling like an impostor. He said, he still did. But, at some point he decided that even if he was an impostor, no one else was going to figure it out. So, his secret was safe.
Cary is right, CBT would be very helpful. I sense the letter writer is ashamed of dropping out. He needs to compose a new social/personal narrative about his history. All my friends and most of my colleagues know I am a drop out. It is part of “my story.” What is important is that I OWN being a drop out and whenever possible try to have a good laugh at my own expense because of it. I never give people the impression that I am ashamed of dropping out. On the contrary, I talk about my rebellious adolescence, “being bored,” having “better things to do than attend classes.”
I also like Cary’s idea of esteemable acts. The letter writer is an amazing success story. He has defied huge odds and become very successful despite an inauspicious beginning (and getting into law school is a sign of success). What a great story to tell while volunteering at the “Boys Club” or Big Brothers” or a local community college?
I went to my 20th high school reunion a few years ago and had a lot of fun. It is much more fun to be the "unlikely success story" than the valedictorian who never quite lived up to "star" potential. Life is short and is a much more pleasant journey if you can embrace the winding road that got you where you are." Jerry and the boys said it best, “What a long strange trip it’s been.”
Oh, and by the way, the combination of a high verbal IQ and a low Quant IQ is incredibly common and signals nothing more serious than being bad at math.
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Whine and Dine
I’m remembering now why I quit reading salon.com a couple years ago. It’s because of the vast number of bits they waste on whingeing of the sort found in this letter to their advice columnist, Cary Tennis.
Do take the time to read the entire thing if you haven't already. Only then will the true mean-spiritedness of my reply make sense. Here it is:
You, young man, are an insufferable boob.
Allow me to summarize in one short paragraph what took you pages to accomplish:
“Look how special I am! I’m a rebel — but smart, really REALLY smart! And misunderstood! Damn those Catholic school nazis! They didn’t appreciate my specialness. But I’m special alright. And a really REALLY deep thinker. AND! I feel things much more deeply than other people, too. Because I’m so special! Oh, woe is me! How can a super-special and smart and deep-feeling person such as myself possibly survive in a world where I’m expected to…you know…work for a living?”
To make matters worse, Cary Tennis then goes on, for far too many paragraphs himself, reinforcing this nitwit’s inflated sense of self worth.
Sigh.
Here’s what the guy needed to hear — perhaps accompanied by a swift smack upside the head.
Wecome to the real world, chum. Everything you’re feeling has already been felt by thousands of law students before you. You are not unique. You are not special. You’re just another person who’s worried about passing, worried about making a living, worried about paying his bills. Get over it already. Whether you succeed or you screw up, either way you’ll have plenty of company. Just do the best you can and deal with the consequences — whatever they are — once they’re manifest. There’s no point in freaking out about the unknown.
Gee. And it only took me a single paragraph to answer the guy. Sometimes I think Cary Tennis must get paid by the word.