I actually had this exact same conversation with an adult friend of mine who is returning to school. She wants to work in art therapy with children and young adults (and she would be wonderful at it) but she needs to pass Statistics, apparently, to get into graduate school. As soon as she mentioned the word "Statistics," the entire conversation went downhill.
She is stupid about math, she said. She can't do it. She's never been able to do it. She failed and she'll fail again.It doesn't make sense to her. She has a tutor, which didn't make a difference. If she can't pass statistics, she won't get into grad school, and if she doesn't get into grad school, she'll not be able to pursue her career goals. And she actually said that if she couldn't have that as a career goal, everything else felt worthless.
I stopped her, as you did your barista, and started asking questions. Turns out this was the first time she'd taken the class, and she was astonished to find that many, many people take it more than once in order to understand it. Turns out the tutor did help, just not as much as my friend as hoped. And like your barista, my friend is bright and hard-working, so this piece of the puzzle didn't make sense.
In the end, what I found out was that in the rest of her schoolwork, she has an A average. Because she was having difficulty with statistics, she found herself falling short of her own standard -- and the self-talk took her all the way down the drain.
I don't think I was successful at helping her reframe her thinking as you were with your friend. But I won't stop trying! It just shows that how we frame things -- "I can't pass the first time with flying colors, therefore I will never pass, never get an A and everything is a mess and I won't be able to accomplish my career choice and therefore my life is all screwed up" -- can color all our thoughts.
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Alison,
I actually had this exact same conversation with an adult friend of mine who is returning to school. She wants to work in art therapy with children and young adults (and she would be wonderful at it) but she needs to pass Statistics, apparently, to get into graduate school. As soon as she mentioned the word "Statistics," the entire conversation went downhill.
She is stupid about math, she said. She can't do it. She's never been able to do it. She failed and she'll fail again.It doesn't make sense to her. She has a tutor, which didn't make a difference. If she can't pass statistics, she won't get into grad school, and if she doesn't get into grad school, she'll not be able to pursue her career goals. And she actually said that if she couldn't have that as a career goal, everything else felt worthless.
I stopped her, as you did your barista, and started asking questions. Turns out this was the first time she'd taken the class, and she was astonished to find that many, many people take it more than once in order to understand it. Turns out the tutor did help, just not as much as my friend as hoped. And like your barista, my friend is bright and hard-working, so this piece of the puzzle didn't make sense.
In the end, what I found out was that in the rest of her schoolwork, she has an A average. Because she was having difficulty with statistics, she found herself falling short of her own standard -- and the self-talk took her all the way down the drain.
I don't think I was successful at helping her reframe her thinking as you were with your friend. But I won't stop trying! It just shows that how we frame things -- "I can't pass the first time with flying colors, therefore I will never pass, never get an A and everything is a mess and I won't be able to accomplish my career choice and therefore my life is all screwed up" -- can color all our thoughts.
Thanks so much for writing. Great post!
November 10, 2009 - 8:40amThis Comment
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