United in uniformity II

As I've written already in few entries I was suffering very much after my comeback. It was bizarre impression. Everything appeared strange and odd. There was some noise in my ears all the time. I was thinking English, didn't recognize people nor surroundings, I didn't see it properly. I was out of the reality, out of the space that surrounded me. I was in the state of permanent stupor.

I've met one of my former students once and differently from other meetings like that this one made impression on me. She was pregnant, her boyfriend accompanied her, she said "hello". I remembered her very well because she reminded me one of my greatest failures as lecturer. I had classes with third year students and lectured the last linguistic subject on their studies. It happened often that giving the final grade I was asking them which seminar they were going to choose: linguistic or literary one. She told me she was hoping to choose linguistic one however she has to reconsider because she felt stupid in the area after our classes. Is there anything worse than causing someone thinking badly about themselves? OK there are students which are not brilliant in specific field and that's OK for them to realize that, it's even desired. But she was one of the students that it would be hard to decide whether she's smart or not. She wasn't active, she made the impression she just didn't make much effort. I was trying to explain it was not my intention to make her thinking like that, to make her miserable but there is not much one can say after hearing this kind of assertion.

I was suffering so much that after meeting her my christian heritage made me to perceive the whole situation in the category of guilt. I made (unintentionally but still) bad thing and now I have to pay for it, I thought. Price seemed to be disproportionately high but if it would make her stop thinking badly about herself, if it undo the harm I've done than it was worth it.

It all makes me thinking about the conception of success and failure. Once I got matured I've never considered success and someone's approval as equivalent. Most of the people appear to regard them as such though. For me our accomplishments are our success, not what others think about them. Most of my successes are things that will stay hidden form others.

Every time I had a group of students that were completely non-talkative I was making a lot of effort to encourage, to provoke them to talk and finally it always happened at the end of the semester that they became more active. When I had similar situation with a particular student it was quite often the case they stopped being active at the beginning of their studies once they were criticized badly way by some unwise and insensitive lecturer. They were just afraid they would be humiliated again in front of the entire group once they make attempt. Every time my classes occurred to be new beginning for such people I felt fulfilled. Or when some students didn't pass the finale at first attempt but got the highest grade on retake... This kind of things I consider success. When my chief tells me I do brilliant job or lazy job with my students it doesn't tell me much about my performance but such things tell a lot. It shows I did good job indeed, I taught students well and made them to assimilate the knowledge effectively. For most of my colleagues this kind of things are completely beyond their interest. What interests them is to look good in front of their superiors. When students don't want to talk, they interrupt class and send them home, or change class into lecture, or make test as punishment... don't feel like making some real effort. And they don't know a thing about their students so there is no way to know if someone makes real progress and so on. What's important to them is what other say.

The attitude described above was present in EP on very large scale. It was astonishing for me. Success there is something fully related to others' opinions, depending on it completely. Others' approval - that's the concept of success. It leads to very strange behaviors and situations. According to that logic if you want to have success there (and it's desired for everyone) it's not enough to do your job well, it's not really important if you do such job. What's important is if others say you do well. So what you have to do is to make them saying that so you could then tell the others that they said you do fine. It's necessary because you are not allowed - the next rule - to say yourself you're good at something, it would be unacceptable. It would make other people upset or even angry. So to accomplish your goal you have to use various techniques to manipulate them, to provoke them to express positive assessment on your work. The simplest one is talking a lot about it, showing the results often and asking for feedback all the time, even if it's unnecessary and not useful. Normally feedbacks' function is allowing you to improve yourself, not in that case.

That's mostly it. One more thing maybe... It's not only that you're not allowed to express you being good in some fields, it's not acceptable to pointing out your flaws either. You're supposed to be ordinary and provoke others to talk about you as someone extraordinary.

Short review:

1) You are obliged to build your legend.
2) You are not allowed to say by yourself that you're good at something. Making any assessments about your own work based on results of it is not acceptable.
3) You are not allowed to talk about your flaws either.
4) You may and you're supposed to repeat after others that you're good at something.
5) In case to make them express positive review of your work you have to master techniques of manipulating and provoking them to do that.

Success is someone's approval. What can I say? I don't very much care and find it pathetic and dangerously deceptive. The sad thing is if you want to win anything you have to play those cards. That's how it usually works.