You know I heard a quote one time that said if you’re the smartest person in the room you’re in the wrong room. But at the same time my parents always told me whatever I did I needed to be the best at it. Like they put me in tutoring because my math skills were only one year ahead. My family is all engineers, computer scientists etc. Everybody’s a bachelor’s or above except my one sister who’s specifically disabled.
When I decided on nursing school I was like OK I’m just going to aim for something achievable for me. The content should be right at my level, at least I’ll be able to excel at that like they’re expecting. And the coursework itself was super easy. I had all the chem physics and bio I needed for the conceptual groundwork. I had all the Greek and Latin roots I needed for the terminology. Even the math was actually right on my level (basic algebra, ratio and proportion, PEMDAS equations), I just needed to up my accuracy when I had previously optimized for speed.
But they absolutely humbled me in people skills and emotional resiliency. I actually flunked out the first time for being too emotionally immature. They made me cry on the regular and I just couldn’t get a grip on what they wanted from me interaction wise. It was actually my first shitty job at a psych hospital + going through therapy simultaneously that fixed me. It’s wild to say but I feel like the literally criminally insane men I was working with taught me better people skills than my parents did. I learned so much about respect and what it really meant to uphold a promise through adversity and how to keep my stupid mouth shut.
So. I thought I was aiming low, and I still wound up being the dumbest person in the room.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
That actually sounds pretty reasonable to me (not to excuse your parents, if applicable). It’s not the same thing at all, but I learned much better people skills from living with a boyfriend who had abandoned his treatment for and didn’t tell me about his paranoid schizophrenia than from anyone else. He read so much into everything I said, that I learned to speak very deliberately.
When you are working with people with a very different perspective on the world that you can’t change, and neither party feels entitled to acceptance because of family, you need to learn how to treat others respectfully and with dignity to succeed.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Yeah I feel like it’s one of those things that sounds completely insane unless you’ve been through it. A lot of it was learning how to respond to crazy but I did actually learn a few positive behaviors directly from them. You’d be surprised how much please / thank you and sir / ma’am they use. I also learned to stand a lot taller, swagger a little, and speak from my chest. Like people will comment on how much confidence I display which is wild to me being actually in my own head.
snooggums@piefed.world 16 hours ago
I have found this helps but also that a lot of people hear what they want to hear no matter how clear and deliberate you are, and recognizing who those people are is another skill.