BS: They said I couldn't

Subject: RE: BS: They said I couldn't
From: Rapparee
Date: 04 Apr 04 - 03:43 PM

I was, in high school, a member of the "Zero Club." This named by one of the teachers, who felt that the member would never amount to more than a zero in life.

Let's see: I have one MS degree and more than enough education for a second. Another member (now deceased) had a master's in English lit. Another holds a pretty responsible job in Silicon Valley. Yet another worked for the Metropolitan Opera prior to his acceptance into medical school -- unfortunately, he died just before he was to have started.

Then there's my niece Elizabeth: she's graduating next month with a degree in a combined Biology/Chemistry program and has been offered a fellowship at the U. of Iowa (tuition and fees plus $21,000/year) -- she was told by her high school vocational counselor that if she shouldn't feel badly if she didn't make it through her first year of college, because "lots of girls don't." Her sister -- a college sophomore with a grade point average of 4.0 -- was told by the same man that she "probably wasn't smart enough" for college work.

In my undergrad days I have a lousy, really lousy, semester. The academic dean told me I was on academic probation and if I didn't do a little better I'd be out at the end of the next semester. I told him I'd be in the Honors Program at the end of the next semester. To his GREAT surprise, I was.

Don't tell people that they can't do something. It's liable to piss them off enough for them to far outstrip you.

Subject: RE: BS: They said I couldn't
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 04 Apr 04 - 03:33 PM

flattop: Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed getting my enducation and teaching in college. My education led me on to become Director of a large Museum and Nature Center, where I also ran a folk concert series for 27 years.

I guess you could safely say that I enjoyed it.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: They said I couldn't
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 04 Apr 04 - 03:31 PM

My son Gideon was told by his first grade teacher that he'd never be able to write legibly, and he might as well accept it and learn to type. She gave us the same advice at a parent-teacher conference. By the time he was in fifth grade, his handwriting was much better than his first grade teacher's and he proved to be particularly talented at tasks that required fine motor skills like you, Metchosin.

I think "Screw you!" is a variant of "Stuff it!.

Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: They said I couldn't
From: flattop
Date: 04 Apr 04 - 03:27 PM

Now that you two are doing these things in spite of other peoples' negativity, do you enjoy them. Nematode's anuses don't sound exciting to me, quite the opposite. I've never seen them in a glossy magazine but I can't imagine them being attractive.

Subject: RE: BS: They said I couldn't
From: Metchosin
Date: 04 Apr 04 - 03:13 PM

I failed typing when I was in high school. Nobody ever failed typing back then, especially females. The typing teacher commented, "You're not very good with your hands, are you!", while watching me get my fingers stuck between the keys during a typing test.

I always thought of the comment and thought "Screw you!" when a few years later, I regularly did what was called "pereneal sections" of nematodes under a microscope. The procedure involved removing the nematode's vulva and anus with a scalpel and cleaning the little section cuticle to remove eggs and extraneous debris with a "needle" made made from one of my eyebrows and then processing and mounting the "pereneal sections" on slides.

It did require a considerable amount of manual dexterity and I got very good at it. Most nematodes are very, very tiny, hardly visible to the naked eye and their naughty bits are even smaller.

A lot of the stuff I've done in my life and mastered was because someone told me I couldn't do it.

Unfortunately, typing is one area where I still fail misereably, although at least with a keyboard on a computer, there's no room to jam my fingers between the keys.

Subject: BS: They said I couldn't
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 04 Apr 04 - 02:23 PM

Back when I was in college, I was having a lot of trouble keeping my head above water. I was getting terrible grades and ended up flunking out at the end of my sophomore year. Worse yet, I didn't believe that I was "college material." No one in my family went to college, and I thought that I'd end up working at the Fisher Body plant in my hometown, like most of my other friends from high school.
When I was allowed back in school on probation, I took a Geology course and really liked it, so I went to talk with my professor. I told him I wanted to major in Geology, and go on to graduate school.
At that point, I didn't even have a C average, and I needed a B average to get into graduate school. The professor just laughed when I told him, and said "Rasmussen, you haven't got the chance of a snowball in Hell of getting into graduate school." I just stared at him, gritted my teeth and said,"not only will I get into graduate school, but you're going to be my major professor." I didn't appreciate being told that I couldn't do it. Like everyone else, I'd been told off and on all of my life that I couldn't do one thing or another. Sometimes it turned out that I couldn't. But many times, being told I couldn't just made me more determined to prove that I could, and I DID! That makes me wonder how many lives are short-circuited because someone told them that they couldn't do something.

Maybe someone is telling you right now that you can't do something that you want to do... that you're stupid to even try. I know that everyone in here has been told that they couldn't do something that they ended doing, and doing well.

Tell me about it.

By the way, I got straight A's my last two years of undergraduate school and got into graduate school on a scholarship. Stuff you're "no chance!"

Jerry