I was never the guy you would ask to “share notes” with in high school. This is likely because I never had any notes, -haha-. At any given point, I had precisely zero idea what was going on in class or what was even in my backpack. It was a cold day in hell if I could produce so much as a pencil from the intestines of that over stuffed sack. My family made sure to keep me equipped with all the necessary gear and tools to succeed, but somehow I never could connect those things to any sort of action, towards my studies or otherwise.
Here is a few more “I was never”s on the topic.
- I was never really a good student -evident
- I never felt a sense of fitting in academically, or in most cases even socially.
- I was never interested in the adea of “academic achievement”
- I was never academically or intellectually motivated in any real sense (making partner work challenging for my assigned partners).
Pretty bleak properties of a student..
However, and without sounding -cliche- my brain was/is incredibly active. There is probably some latent clinical ADHD in here somewhere, but I always had what felt like a billion things on my mind. This isn’t some reminiscence like “I was such a unique teenager”. Honestly, what kid my age didn’t have a brain filled past the brim with stuff to try and work through. As I think on it now, I think my problem was likely related to the “capture” of any particular thought, like trying to catch butterflies in a field with your bare hands. Even when there are thousands of them and they are so thick you can’t see through them; boy when you do end up getting ahold of one, you squash the living -shit- out of it.
There is one incredibly vivid memory of mine that stands out in relation to this experience. We were reading the Iliad and the Odyssey during my junior year of high school in Mr. Reed’s history class. I of course had not done the reading and was completely lost (such a shame - having read it as an adult, I know younger me would have loved it so so much). Mr. Reed was giving an overview of the history of the cultures present in the book. He described Troy, Sparta, Athens, the major places famous heros of the time would have gone etc. He wasn’t an amazing speaker or anything, and the accounts he was describing were very basic, but I was basically hallucinating with incredible clarity a picture of the world as he described it; I was so dialed in.
For the entire duration of that class period, nothing really existed outside of the world he created for me in my head. Then when the class was done, it was gone.
It wasn’t until much later that I wonder about the gravity of those thoughts. How was it that they could occupy the same space as hundreds of other thoughts, then disappear without making any lasting impact? I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking during that time, it probably wasn’t anything at all. Those thoughts just were, and for the time from which they existed, I understood them completely.
This happens to me to some degree even now. I have developed as semblance of control now, whereas, I can “dial in” like I did when I was younger. This tends to be a selective experience when I am exploring topics or working on projects I am genuinely interested in or curious about, though admittedly my focus isn’t as strong or operate with nearly the same stamina range as it did. I understand now why some of the more successful students took more copious notes back then. Building notes or simply just writing things down allows me to just dump the thought or idea. It takes up so much space. Once its out - I can observe it from a few new angles. and say “Wow, there is plenty of room in here now, so I can nurture this in a way that actually makes sense”. I can add to it, subtract from it, scrap it.. “twist it, slap it, twist it..” oop - sorry.
I suppose I like the idea of “sharing my notes”. I never contributed anything to anyone or anything as a younger man and student, so I like to think of myself as that same dumb student simply making up lost time.