Computer everyone and welcome to another episode of the podcast all the things ADHD. Oh went for kind of a BBC vibe they're received. Yeah,
we're like a new Toronto subway door.
Oh, yeah, no. Okay.
Yeah, yeah, it's the idea of forward propulsion today. Yeah. The we can do it. Um, yeah, channeling the Toronto subway trying.
So long as it's not the DC metro chargers. Yeah,
we just burst into flames. Like, we just burst it,
we have to indicate that my use of the Toronto times was a parody use and therefore covered by fair dealing, and or fair use. Please don't sue us.
It's not like you get anything from us anyways,
right. Now, there's an awful lot of emails that I'm not ready to deal
with that. So yeah, basically, basically weird. We've established shortage as retribution, you have to drive the Metro now. Sorry.
You're like rock paper scissors on the platform for who's driving the train today's super collaborative problem solving.
I am one of your co hosts Lee Skallerup Bessette.
And I think at this point, I just have to induce myself as a co Horst because I'm doing that a lot on intention. I'm a co Horst. Good Amy Morrison. Yes, that's me.
That's you. How you been doing?
It little bit frazzled? Can you tell? Is it coming through where we're doing our return to campus next week, all of a sudden, surprise. And so we had to pivot over Christmas break, where we were encouraged both to take time off and really recharge and also transform all of our in person teaching into remote teaching for return on January 24, which was like no surprise law, you're still at home. And then it was like surprise law. You're all back on campus. On February the seventh, and now faculty are freaking out and students are freaking out and everyone is freaking out. And my. Yeah, so my general vibe is, is freaking out, everyone around me is freaking out. And I'm trying to find the path through it that's going to be the most equitable and supportive for everyone within my powers, such as they are to execute on those plans. So we're, we're still working it out. We're in the in betweens again. And still.
You know, pretty good. We we went, we went back to campus this week. But because of regulations around meeting sizes, and that kind of stuff, since we're staff, it was sort of like, well, since we can't have in person meetings, then why are we coming to the office, so let's just stay remote for another couple of weeks until the university revises this. So I was I was like, okay, good. Great. Awesome.
Yeah, it's funny. We have like sort of the the same thing here about like, please don't have in person meetings. But they've, like all of Ontario just kind of reopened yesterday in honor of my birthday. And they have the capacity limits, right. So restaurants are opening about 50% capacity cinemas open at 50% capacity of the nail spas open at 50% capacity. So you sort of see 500 people at a hockey game like Yeah, yeah. So you see where I'm going with this like 50% capacity on except classrooms? Yes. Are 100% capacity? Yeah. So somehow sitting together in those spaces where we know most of our masks are useless to prevent transmission of omachron If you all sit together in a poorly ventilated room for three hours, which is what my god crap grad class has to do. So yeah, 100%. So we're not supposed to have meetings in person, but we are supposed to jam the regular number of students into the regular sized classrooms for hours at a time.
That's good. That's good. I got my nails done. My daughter, man, we get my nails done.
I saw that on Instagram, and they look amazing, and they still look amazing.
Here's the thing, like, so there's something about my fingernails, that nail polish just won't stay on them. Like, I will get a manicure. And I opened the door to my car and his ruins.
Well, I think we have to, like just stipulate from the outset that regular non gel nail polish is straight bullshit. No one I think can wear it. Okay, you know, for more than 35 minutes which is why like, you know, you watch like episodes of Mad Men and like their secretaries up the desk like filing and repainting their nails. It's because they had to they did them in the morning and then they came into work and they have to do them and they started typing and then it when they started Yeah, thing so I would say it's not just you. Okay, yeah,
I always thought it was something because I was always like, everyone knows that they always look so pretty in mind. You're just like garbage. So I got the powder dip this time and I'm like, Yeah, okay, this is actually pretty nice. And they match my glasses. They look amazing, honestly match my glasses. So I actually feel pretty good about that. I'm you know, And it keeps me from picking because I watched what I did. Yeah, there's so
much new around. There's nothing. There's no surface.
Also unsatisfying to scratch though. Like, just like I've, you know, my arm is itchy. And I'm like, this just isn't cutting it right now but
like I give I like it. Mm hmm. Yeah, no.
When? Yeah. When so this is like the nicest my cuticles have ever looked.
They look amazing, frankly. Thank goals. Your hands are now goals. Yeah, I wish the whole world could see them. I have like a Funfetti nail polish. Oh, nice manicure. Yeah, I will click the cupcake
for a child. Yeah. My daughter got like, blue gray sparkly, which is totally Yeah. And she gets she gets the acrylics as well because their nails don't grow very well, either. Because she, you know, picks them
and takes them. Yeah, weird. I think like, maybe like a hot take. Maybe fancy manicures, like chalok or acrylic or powder dip should be covered by disability insurance plans, because it keeps us from our bad stems of self harm, and allows us to make up for our rotten nails that we have because we chomped them all the time. It's an access technology. Yeah. For adult living. Yeah,
I don't know if that's gonna fly. I really feel
it's probably not gonna fly. I mean, we can't get stuff like, Please don't make me go to school with the immune disease. If we can't get that we're probably not going to get the manicures covered. But like Dream Big is what I Oh, yeah.
No, it's true. It's just dream big. It was. So so yeah. Now I've guess I've seen the light, right? Like you pay just that little bit of extra. And it actually is
worth it. You've seen a light reflecting off your remarkably shiny nails. Okay.
I also forgot that I'm going to a conference, actually a symposium in New Orleans. Yeah. So, um, before the the, this will actually tie into our topic today. Trust. Okay. So, um, just before the pandemic hit a Yeah, literally, just before a book came out. collection came out that I was a part of that I had done a submission written an essay, and it was, I should have the title. And of course I don't because why would I have why wouldn't you know, I would I? Me to it, you know, it may to feminist theory and surviving sexual violence in the academy. Good times. Yeah. Good times, like really, honestly. But like, but again, it's, it's the I was sad that it came out and then the pandemic hit, and so didn't get to do any of the kind of, you know, even virtual talks that we wanted to do, because everybody was trying to figure out how to do it. Because it's all academics. We're all trying to figure out how to do remote learning or dealing with our own stuff. And I have to say that it was the price of the books a little steep. It's yeah, it's through Lexington books. And I, you know, it's Mmm hmm. Oh, that's not too bad. Oh, it's coming out in paperback in March 2022. For only $40 as opposed to $105 for the hardback. This is like a rocket? Yeah. Oh, yeah, no, but, but again, I'm happy that you can now pre order the paperback. And I will totally put that in the show notes. I didn't, again, I keep finding out about books that I have that are coming out. And
I love that this woman asked his wife, I think we're having a very ADHD moment right now, because I don't know how many minutes we are into recording. But we have not told anybody what the topic is. You have been surprised to discover the title of the thing that you yourself wrote, did not know what it was called. Or when it was published, or what it cost or what it now is going to cost. But you found it all out right now. And I'm like, hey, maybe we should advocate for manicures to be covered by insurance? Because it's obvious. Maybe thinking? Yeah, I think like we keep getting emails from people going like hashtag relatable. And I think what they mean is like, you guys make no sense. And you jump all over the place periodically making sense in unexpected ways. And eventually we get to the topic, but cool, cool, cool. Cool. Yeah. We're modeling it, we
do we have a topic today. We do okay, we are we are going to be talking about and this is this is where it comes in is that finally after all of COVID. The there is a professor at Tulane, who is also a part of the book and director of the Women's Studies Center. And they've wanted to do a symposium for the past two years on this and we're finally going to be doing it on Friday. And one of the questions and I mean, again, heavy topic, right like the title alone. You know, just tells you everything you need to want to want to know about the topic of the all of these beautiful, wonderful, powerful, amazing essays, which is part of the reason why I'm upset didn't get more not just because of mine, but it's just like, such a good, it's hard. But it's such a good book, like each of the essays, just have your
essay. Okay, the content warning for your essay?
Yes. For all of them, really. Let's be honest. But, um, but one of the things, one of the questions, so we're going to be out there each each contributor, and there's going to be somebody there interviewing us, it's gonna be very NPR, it's like. And so one of the questions that was, is would you write this differently? Or how would you write this? Because it's such a difficult topic, and would you approach it? And and it's so funny, because I was like, this is one of the ones that I this is the essay that I struggled with, where the editor was, like, stop moving in at a time. You know? And I was like, oh, no, actually, right. And so it's this idea of, like, finding that spot where I could like, write this essay. And like, what do I have to do in order to write this essay, I just didn't write the essay. And also that idea of being able to finally kind of write it in my own as much as in my own voice, and being able to sort of move forward with that. And thinking about like, that. That's what made me that's why I was connecting, is that that question popped into my head that like, they were going to ask me this question on Friday, where they were like, so have you thought about the questions yet? And I'm like, Oh, you're sweet. It's,
I'm thinking about them right now. It's better that way.
It's better that way. Like, I'm like, maybe I'll think about them on the plane. Like, let's, let's be honest here, but, but we can start thinking about them now. Because it's, it's this idea of, well, you put it better you had the better. Where's the topic? I'm starting to ramble. So
and that's funny. I was like listening to you trying to remember even though I just pitched this topic to about four minutes ago, I'm like, What did I pitch and I remember now, because you did get close. And I said, the two of us were like two drunks trying to keep each other steady as we like, we get each other, leaning into each other, we're gonna keep upright, mostly. And it's about voice. I'm teaching a graduate seminar this semester, and I have 15 students, and I'm supervising some other graduate students, and it's like, you know, applying to PhD season and it's like applying for like Ontario Graduate Scholarship season. And it's like, you know, starting to get through the the assignment and coursework season. And a lot of students you know, that I deal with in my various capacities that are really struggling with what voice to write in, right, like, and this is germane to our listeners here who are not academics, even in that they are struggling to find a way to be someone that they are not, because they think that's the way that they need to be right. So, you know, changing the words that they use when they write stuff down, or like, they'll come and see me about something and they'll describe their project in very cogent, conversational terms. And then write something that sounds like it's been through like Google translate into Lithuanian, and then Google translate into Polish, and then Google translate into Tagalog and then back to English. Finally, like via the Jordan Peterson, thesaurus translator, you know, where it's like if there's a more pretentious word, that's the one that we use. And I'm like, why? And it's because they don't think they're enough. Right? This will probably resonate with some of our listeners that that think that the way that they are, right, and the way that they think, and the way that they write, and the way that they speak is wrong, and not enough, right. So if they want to sort of succeed in graduate school, they need to transform the words that they use the the grammatical constructs, they employ, the topics that they're interested, like, everything they feel they need to be somebody different. And I've been a professor for 17 and a half years now. And I can say, it doesn't work. Right? It doesn't work. And as somebody with ADHD, and who is autistic, I can say, I tried that for many years in my own life to speak like somebody else be like somebody else do the work like other people. And that didn't work for me, either. Right? And, and so I think when you tell people, you know, you should write more like yourself. And they will say things like, Well, that's easy for you to say, because, like, you're established or you have tenure, or you're a grown up or like whatever it is, you're not beholden to somebody or another. Or alternatively they'll say, like, you know, but this is academic work, and it's not personal. Like it's not about me, I don't want to like, like be too personal, right? Um, but I think there is a way I mean, we struggle with this too, like you and I have spoken in the podcast about You know, who do we disclose to at work? And in what contexts? And how much do we share about ourselves in order to make enough space for us to get into the work and not get out of the work? Right. And so I think it's might be interesting for us to think about maybe through the context of student writing, or our own writing in ways that metaphorically or ontologically applied to how neurodivergent people move through the world is how can I, you know, level up to this situation, I'm in a work situation or a personal situation, of scholastic situation where I know I need to learn and grow. But I still get to be me, I still get to sound like me. When I write, I still get to, you know, not think about the questions in advance because that doesn't work for me, I still get to, you know, write using the I pronoun, or write using Internet slang or I get to write about the topic from the location, I encountered it not from a generalized location, right? Like, how can we grow ourselves and learn without becoming somebody else, or without trying to become someone else, which as like, I'm sure you've had the experience of also, you try to be more quiet, like, it doesn't you can't be that person, you have to find a way to make who you are fit in the new context. And that's about boundaries. And it's about confidence. And it's about self knowledge and a bunch of other things that I thought we could probably get some mileage or coloriage. Out of today, kilometer Ridge, for our Canadian listeners are appreciate the message. I mean, for anybody who's not American. Yeah, basically.
Yeah. Well, and what's, what's interesting about that, too, is that that whole a lot of that impetus, because I was like, Oh, that was me in grad school. That was me in grad school, like first. And I had done my undergrad in like Technical and Professional Writing, and journalism. And so it was all about brevity and precision. And like, all that, and then I went to grad school and like, in conflict, and it was not Yeah, you had people who talked like that you just made you feel small. And, you know, like, I have no idea what I'm talking about. And but the other I mean, one of the one of the biggest issues about that is, again, that pressure that we feel, either either rightfully in a lot in a lot of cases or or it's wholly manufactured or partially manufactured, is that external judgment, right, is how am I going to be received? How is this going to be received? How are people going to perceive me? How is this judgment going to be and so it's, it's, it's a lot about not surprising, again, is it's that internalized standards, right? We can say ableism for ADHD, you can say,
you were to Yeah, everybody's internalized reviewer, too. Right. Yeah. Everybody. Journalists, you were always writing for the scholar that hates us,
right. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, even the the imposter syndrome, right. Like, I didn't go to fancy grad schools, or, you know, I come from a, you know, not the kind of background that you think other than non traditional, which made way outweigh and outnumber the number of quote unquote, traditional kinds of students that there are, and yet every single one of us that have some sort of non traditional coming into academia, backgrounds, feel like, we need to try to make ourselves into as as close to the traditional student as humanly possible.
Right. Right. And, and I think, I think that's absolutely true. I acknowledge your experience. And yeah, and, and what that involves is, I mean, we talk about inclusion, right, and we're gonna have non traditional students and like, we want to support first generation students, or, you know, we want to support students who come from the wrong side of the tracks in terms of what elementary schools they went to, and like all of this stuff, but then when we are welcomed, as it were, with admission to these institutions, the expectation is that now we will become like everybody else. And that's inclusion. That's like diversity in the barest sense, right as if you took a photo, right? Or made a list of people's hometowns or people's parents jobs, that would look more diverse right. But the expectation is, once the sausage is made, and you get that degree, you are the same kind of sausage as everybody else. So that difference that led to your inclusion being novel, right at a certain point is what has to get erased out of you so so people who are entering like institutions or situations already from a position of some type of otherness, be it like a learning disability, a language background and immigration status, you know, racial status, educational, like background or parental income status, are already entering a system that other people know how to navigate better because They were born into those systems. And then once they get there, the people who were born into those systems recognize what they have to do, and then do it, because it's their natural way of doing things. And all of those who are sort of the first entrance of their family into that institution not only have to learn how to navigate it, they have to change themselves to fit into that institution. It's like masking. And just like masking, you hate yourself the whole time you're doing it, right. You know, the first time you discover that, like, people actually buy all of the textbooks, right, and they have the new editions of the textbooks or people, you know, know where to get them for free, and you didn't and you spend all of your student aid on on textbooks, or people have already read a lot of this stuff that's being referenced, or people like already know, like, when you put your hand up in first year English and say, like, do I have to use five paragraphs for this and other people roll their eyes at you? Right? Like, you're like, what rule did I not know, about here, and I'm a bad person for that, right? So we learned early that the system like doesn't want you to be different, which all of us who are neurodivergent have experienced to various degrees already. And the solution to that always, when we were young and powerless was people telling us to conform to the norm, right? Just to fit in, in our daily circumstances. So we learned how to not trust our own instincts, we learned that the things that we like were wrong, and the things that we wanted to do were wrong, and the ways that we wanted to do them were wrong, and our emotions were wrong, we tried to become different. And almost all of us I imagined, I've had the experience of that failing spectacularly. And not achieving the goals at wanted, or alternatively, succeeding spectacularly. But we still feel incredibly lonely, because nobody actually knows who we really are. Right. And when we bring those into work contexts, to where, but we're not children anymore, right? We are fully fledged adults at this point, with a little bit more self awareness of our molds of difference. And yet sometimes we enter these spaces that just like this institutional and family spaces of our childhood, people seem to show us that there's one right way to do things. And then that's the way that we should do them. And we fall right back into those patterns, right? From our childhood of like, Oh, yes, of course, I am entirely wrong, I have the wrong number of arms and legs, I should change the number of arms and legs I have, I have the wrong number of spoons, right? To do this type of work, I should learn to love email, everybody wants to hold meetings over email instead of synchronously and so I guess I'm the problem here, right. And so we move right back into that, that self hatred, cool. And we try to transform ourselves. And as, as somebody who like,
I work with a lot of Junior Scholars, I do peer review, I do like academic support. I do all this stuff with my grad students and other people's grad students. I will, I will say that watching that process unfold on other people is heartbreaking. Yeah, we see people come and they're enthusiastic. And they love the idea of what they're going to do. And they slowly figure out that they are entirely wrong about everything, and then they try so hard to become somebody else. Right. And in that process, kind of lose the joy of it. And all of us lose what that difference can bring, right? We don't all have to write to assuage reviewer to who we always imagined as some cranky old white guy with architect glasses and a tweed jacket with patches. And he smells a bit weird, because somebody has to remind him to wash his hair every now and again. I don't even like that guy. Why is he sitting on my shoulder? When I write? Why am I changing my research topics so that I can get published in the journal that he runs? Why am I changing the way that I use words, so that he will think I'm smart? And I can be in his club? Right? Yeah. And so like, I know, we've talked here about how we need to learn to trust our own instincts in our personal lives. You know, if you need to flap your hands, when you're at the hospital, flap your hands, that's what you need to do. Other people don't do that. You need to do that. Cool. But maybe you're the person at work, who wants to lead the last minute webinar on something. And that's cool. Maybe you don't want to think about the questions until you're already on the airplane. Maybe you want to write a series of 800 word essays that get published in in trade publications, and you can do that no problem. Maybe that's who you are. Why do you have to be somebody different?
Yeah. Well, I think that there's the CIO, bringing a lot of things to mind for this, because I'm just reflecting back on my own experience, particularly educationally. But I think also, I think also professionally, and just also thinking about you know, here in the United States, of course, the the higher education landscape is vast and huge. And, and, and diverse, just in terms of institution types, and geography and all of that kind of stuff. And so in order to, you know, we always have the I know in Canada, they have it too as the Maclean's rankings and here we have the US World News rankings that everybody you know, that's why Harvard and all the elite institutions love that a million students apply and they'll only take point. Oh, and so the rejection rate is higher. That's a Mark Yeah. And that helps them in the rankings, right? Like, that's something that helps them in the rankings, which is just ridiculous. But anyway, what, of course, people have been trying to find alternatives to that. And one of the ones that they've come up with is actually the economic like economic mobility index, where which universities, graduate students who 10 years later are better off economically than they were coming in sort of thing, like they've moved up the socio economic ladder. Another one was about the ability to pay, like the level of debt, and the ability to pay it off, like what were the best places for those. And it was all either CUNY and CUNY institutions. So public universities in New York City, that were largely HS eyes, which are Hispanic serving institutions, and Cal State University is that we're there were also a lot of HBCUs, which are historically black colleges and universities here in the United States that do that. And so it's, it's, you know, it's this really, interest in all of these places, of course, maybe not, of course, but specialize in the kind of students that they draw from, right, they are very, you know, regionally located right, then that's the whole point, you're serving your region, be it a borough in New York City, right, or, you know, a rural section of Northern California, but nonetheless, right, like, you know, your students that you're drawing from, and they've done incredible work, creating programs, creating support, creating academic programs, hiring faculty, that create an environment where students can succeed, and I would, I think, be more authentic and more, right, not not so much that they have to think about that. And so that's, that's the kind of thing is like we're talking about, what can we do, as individuals, let's say to grow is, is find that space, or create that space, where you're where not necessarily everyone is like you, obviously, but like that there are systems or an environment where you can grow, right, like where it's a like, nice, rich, like metaphorically place rich, fertile garden, and you know, where you can, where you can go, and you're a part of the ecosystem, right, you are a natural part of the ecosystem, as opposed to, unfortunately, again, there's lots to say about elite institutions and all of that kind of stuff and the efforts that they make, but like you said, there is this flattening, where it's just like, we are going to turn you into something, as opposed to the approach, we are going to nurture who you already are.
Right? Yeah, instead of like you are lucky to be here, you can turn you into the type of student who normally comes here, right. So if you have like, these sort of land grant universities are like the the state based, you know, smaller regional institutions that will be like, a lot of people in the classrooms are going to show up with foreign backgrounds and military backgrounds. And the teacher probably has a foreign background and a military background, and they understand each other's life circumstances, and backstories, right? And so you feel like you can grow from that, that you don't have to repudiate everything that you already are in order to succeed, right? Which is great. And we can find that in affiliative communities, right? Like this is why, you know, there will be like a women's caucus or something or a disability caucus or something right or like, you know, rooms for various self identify groupings of variously marginalized people will come together as a quote unquote, safe space, which just basically means I don't have to explain everything I say to everybody. And when I say like, this is happening, people are gonna nod because they get me so I already feel included, right, and we don't lose our voices. In fact, we seek out those spaces in order to be able for a change to stop masking and use our authentic voices to be able to talk about you know, the experiences of our childhood in ways that don't make people roll their eyes at us or explain like a certain experience of a public something or other that may diverge from the mainstream and people will be like, Are you sure that's what it was? Because I think your intentions were good, right? And that's great. And I work at like a research institution in southwestern Ontario
that all research don't they all claim to be very suits institutions in Canada, though they're
in the EU 15 Yes. Oh, yes. And like an American right now because like, you could fit 10 Harvard's inside of the University of Waterloo because we can be excellent without restricting ourselves to find out No, no,
I look, I went you know, you're telling me I went to Sherbrooke, like the most? It is it is hard. I don't know if it's part of the EU 15 But it's got a law school. It's got a well regarded Blackpool school. It's got everything one of the best engineering programs in the country, but you Still, like the most working class place you've ever watched? Because the elites went to Quebec City and Montreal?
That's right. Yeah. You know, or they went somewhere in the US. Yeah. Yeah. So like, that's a great thing about the Canadian system, in some ways is that, like all universities expanded the size that they need to be disturbed to qualified applicants, right? It's not like we need to keep the numbers here artificially small, right? To prove how elite we are, it's the fact of having our name on your degree that makes you employable. That way we can't, we have to keep a scarcity mentality here like so. But in southwestern Ontario, where I live, we draw a high number of international students, our programs are quite renowned in engineering and computer science. And also we draw a lot from just the demographics of southwestern Ontario, which itself is heavily first generation immigrant, rich, right, as well as from other places, in Ontario, and other places in Canada. So pretty much nobody has the same experience in any of the classrooms that I teach it, right? It's like a very, very broad space. But because the entrance requirements for Waterloo are so high, everybody walks in with this identity of like, I have to be a smart kid. Yes. Right. And for many of them, once they enter, like the, the sort of aura attached to the word University, is such that even people who got the highest grade point averages in their high schools, come to a university and think that there's something wrong with them, and they need to change. Yeah, right. So even those self identified smart kids are like, now what do I have to do and they immediately change the way they write? Right? They start reading like Jordan Peterson, I'm not a fan of Jordan Peterson, you can probably tell, but if you read any of his public statements, I can't listen to him talk because he's so whiny want to punch him in the face. Like Trump, I can't listen to a man's voice. either. I just can't do it. I can read it. It's a sensory thing for me. I'm autistic, I read it and get through it faster. But like the words are so unnecessarily complicated, and I can tell that they're trying to manifest smartness. Yeah, right. And for them smartness is not the way I talk. And, and I think that's like, that will be very recognizable, to our listeners is like to be successful. Like, I must do these things. And it's basically like, you're going to George Costanza, it do the opposite of what George would do. Like George Costanza is, all of us, our interactions with the world have demonstrated that our natural way of doing things is often not likely to produce success. And so we have learned that the pattern is really, really want to do it one way, stop, and then do it the opposite way. And it's exhausting and soul crushing, right, as we've talked about masking is exhausting and soul crushing.
And in, again, usually unsuccessful, not just in terms of like, soul crushing, and all of that, but it's like, there's something always just a little off, right. Like, I could have sworn I did it the way that like, I think you did it. But I didn't. And I don't even understand why. Yeah, you're right. Like, there's, there's just like, I tried to write it this way. I tried to and I mean, that was that was me in grad school was try I tried to write it that way. I use the big words. And, I mean, there's always that risk, though. So there's the, you know, creating that environment where where there is, but then, you know, if and I think this is where certainly our experiences neurodivergent, as helps is that, you know, a lot of the times people who go on to be successful in anything, right? If even if they have had to change themselves are like, well, this is how you be successful. And so I'm actually helping people have a similar background of mine, by forcing them to change because that's what works for me, and I want it to work for them. Right. So there's this idea of Yeah.
Right. But, but, but again, that's, that's the argument that's made for Standard English, right for the enforcement of norms of standard English, right? And it would sort of say, like, you know, the way that you speak is legitimate, and it's cultural, but in the real world, like, I just want you to succeed, and I appreciate you, but other people won't, right. That's why like, this is tough love, I am roughing you up right now. So you can take a punch later, right? And I'm thinking like, why are we letting people loose into a world where we think punching is normal? Right? And that's for me the battle right? So there's like this concept of students having the right to their own language, like promoted in writing studies, right through four seasons, stuff, like students have the right to their own language, which is to say, some of us, you know, speak in slang that's appropriate to our age. Some of us have cultural references from, you know, being older or younger than others. Some of us speak in particular dialects particular to certain communities like African American Vernacular English is probably the best known of these, like what used to be called Ebonics, and is now African American Vernacular English. There's like also different types of English that attach to immigrant communities. We're all sort of second language learners together or a mix up of different types of language vocabularies. And so we would say like students can be equally smart. And equally good writers write in any of their own languages, their versions of English that they have. So students have the right to their own English and that the idea there is that it's a certain type of violence to make people right in Standard English, which is not their language, right. And like, this is a tough one. This is something that I have grappled with like some, there are many students who, like I teach a lot of students who are international students in their math students, and I teach them in first year writing, and they make writing errors in English that are particular to people who speak Asian languages, like they get the definite and indefinite articles mixed up. Like that's a classic one, like, this is a cat. His name is Jasper, like, this is my cat. This is the cat, like there's a cat versus the cat. Like, they get those articles mixed up a lot, because it doesn't work like that. Yeah, in Asian languages and cool. Like, I'm not gonna circle all of those and fail somebody about that. I'm gonna be like, what I'm trying to teach you is the genre of the memo. And this looks like a memo and it does the things a memo needs to do the English grammatically, is a bit off. That's because you're a second language learner, which is a second issue right? So we can work on that separately if you succeeded at writing this memo, right? Or, you know, once I signed my name on something I was in like grade three or grade four we were learning cursive, you know, like we used to do and you know, my name begins with an A, and I made it look sort of like a like a like the at symbol. Okay, but I made the A like that so that inside of the loop of the A, my whole name fit. Which I was like, That's my expression of me right? Which is like very on brand for me. It's like part calligraphy part. iconography. And the teacher when she handed it back, like I had got 100 on the assignment and she took two marks off because and she had put little slash marks all through the A and for like, one amazing second, I thought she had turned my name into sunshine. I thought it was an affirmation she had I mean, like, because like, circle picture to circle around. Yeah, name. Yeah. And she put the little slashes through like little kids draw sunshine. Right. And I thought, oh, like she took my little gesture of creativity and added something to it that made me feel seen and loved. And then it turned out it was in red pen because it was like, stop doing this. Yeah, right. Wow. Don't be you. Did she know whose paper it was? Yeah, she gave it back to me. It's not like my name was illegible. Yeah. Right. And so when I think about Standard English vs students have a right to their own English. I think a little bit about that. I think about how we crush people souls. I think about that every time I try to type a text and autocorrect corrects my slang. Oh, yeah. The Standard English, right? And I'm like, fuck you. AutoCorrect. Like, it's because it's basically saying you don't talk, right? Yeah. Right. So it's my voice. It's trying to make my voice conform to something that's in the middle of the bell curve. I mean, in Standard English, is not an English that's natural to any English speaker. Right? It is a mode of formal business English with codified rules. That is a standard, like ISO standard for what, you know, middle class business, people are supposed to sound sound like it's not anybody's native language, but it's closer to some people's native languages that it is to others. And that's like, one of those means by which we say to people who you know, were qualified enough to gain entry to a space, you're not doing it, right. Yeah. And when you make somebody transform their language,
you are telling them that who they are is wrong, right? Because we we are kind of our language and, and so like, voice for me is pretty, pretty fundamental. And how can we, again, like in a situation of growth, because people come to school, or people, you know, get new jobs, or people get promoted, or people take on new experiences in their lives, and they're not fully qualified, right? Like, that's why you go to school because you don't know. And you're like, I have to learn, right? But what do I have to learn? Do I have to learn that I need to be somebody different? Is that necessary? Or do I have to learn there are ways that I can use my natural way of speaking with a different vocabulary, and in different genres of writing to accomplish my goals in the world? And that's like a really tough needle to thread. Yeah, right. Really tough. And I think if that's something that we can, individually, like start to grapple with, we will have better boundaries for ourselves, and we will accept challenges that are not bullshit challenges, right? Try to be more normal try to sound like you know, the academics that wrote in the early 1980s. Right, try to use that style of formal diction. You know, try to cite only things that are published in peer reviewed journals don't ever cite a tweet like all of those things that we want to do because That's where we live. And that's where we're learning and we're told, like, not appropriate, not appropriate, not appropriate, change yourself, it's like, is that the type of learning that we need to do? Because we all come into these spaces thinking like, I am not enough, like I need to, I don't know enough, right? I'm gonna, like, take piano lessons, because I don't know enough to improve these songs on my own right. And I have a tendency to more histrionic styles of music, and I can still want to play those pieces. And I'm never going to be somebody who's like, gonna want to do like some blanket blanket chamber music is kind of like, not my jam. I'll try it, right, but it's never gonna be like, I'm gonna have a concert of nothing but chamber music. It's not my jam. I'm gonna be all shopping all the time, even though I hate them. I love them. But when I go to my lessons, my teacher is going to help me like be better at doing the things that I want to do not try to turn me into somebody who likes different types of music that I don't like, once I've had enough experience of them, right. And I think, as neurodivergent people, our first instinct is always like, well, they're probably right. And I'm probably wrong. So I should change everything about myself. And then we work so hard at that. It's Sisyphean. You almost get it, but you don't get it. So you're never quite comfortable. And like the flip side is if you do get it, right, like if you do successfully manage to pass for an old white fart in the academy, and the old white farts let you into their special club, like Are you happy there? No. Because you're not able to be yourself in there. You're still pretending even when you finally win. And you get included in all these groups, you were included on the basis of like, a fakery. Yeah, now you have to maintain it. So you can still be very lonely even when people include you in their club because they included you under false pretenses and that was you pretending to be just like them? Yeah. So why don't we learn without turning ourselves into somebody else?
Thanks, everyone for listening to part one of our conversation. We'll be back next week with the talking about the same topic and get more into depth and go off on tangents because that's what we do. As always, you can find me on the socials as ready writing both on Twitter and Instagram. And you can find Amy as always on the socials as Digi Wanke. And if you are so inclined, please feel free to email us through me at all the all the thing's adhd@gmail.com There we go. I got that right. Apologies for the sound. I am doing this in a hotel room in New Orleans. Because I forgot to do it before I left and I have to do on my phone because I can't apparently get GarageBand recognize my AirPods as a legitimate output for recording. So hooray. That's fun. I'm really good at this, as you can tell. Again, thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next week.
