naamahdarling:mrsfawn:robotlyra:violent-darts:charlesoberonn:jelloapocalypse:These bother me sometim
naamahdarling:mrsfawn:robotlyra:violent-darts:charlesoberonn:jelloapocalypse:These bother me sometimes.We all start as literal useless babies. No one gets a magic ticket that makes them better at anything. If someone says they “never practice” it’s probably because they like doing the skill and see it as a fun use of their time instead of “practice”.I will qualify this a small but I think important amount, because what it is is actually complicated: Some people’s brains and nervous systems are wired for better hand-eye coordination. Some people’s brains and nervous systems are wired for better pattern recognition. Or translations of audio input. Or whatever. What this does is combine with @jelloapocalypse‘s EXTREMELY WELL-OBSERVED COMMENT (If someone says they “never practice” it’s probably because they like doing the skill and see it as a fun use of their time instead of “practice”.) in a way that can be both invisible and give this kind of person a massive leg up while being really discouraging to someone who doesn’t have that wiring. It doesn’t get to the actual original comic’s level of “oh I just started here”. But let’s take two people called Riley and Kennedy, and we’ll do singing, since that’s what I teach. Riley and Kennedy have exactly the same kind of background: parents who listen to the radio sometimes, the usual social stuff around popular music of whatever genre, etc, but no formal training. Neither of them sings in a church choir, neither of them falls into a formal disability category, whatever. The first time Riley shows up in my studio and we sing a really simple song I use as a diagnostic, she gets it mostly right. She can follow the tune; she can hear pitch, and it takes very little work for her to chivvy her voice into matching that pitch as long as there’s not something pulling her off. (In other words: as long as I’m singing the same notes as her and playing them on the piano, and as long a she can hear both herself and those notes). For Riley the lesson is really fun and validating and she goes home and sings along to her own music for a while and comes back next week with six songs she wants to try learning. And most of her lessons are like that: pretty easy positive feedback. That means Riley “practices” a lot in exactly the way @jelloapocalypse describes, even if she doesn’t think she’s actually practicing (that is, sitting down to sing the songs we’re working on together in a systematic way) at all. In contrast, the first time Kennedy comes to my studio, she struggles. It’s harder for her to hear the difference between notes, and it’s much harder for her to make her voice actually match the pitch she wants to sing at. When we pull out the diagnostic tune, she mostly manages to drone a few clusters of semi-tones, and while she can hear that she’s Off, it’s actually very hard for her to tell HOW she’s off, or what she should do to correct it. In most cases, for Kennedy, lessons - and in fact the overall experience of singing - is not fun. It’s not validating. It’s a whole process of Not Being Good, of Doing Things Wrong, and given the way humans are often in casual situations being laughed at. When Kennedy goes home she doesn’t sing along with any music she plays: she keeps her lips pressed together and at best enjoys other people singing (and maybe feels envious and demeaned because she can’t do it). Now the thing is, the practical “skill” difference for Riley and Kennedy here at the beginning is minimal. But the Rileys will tend (if they like what they’re doing) to ROCKET UP THE SKILL LEVEL, because of the “practice is fun so it’s just the thing I do” - because there is always a bunch of validation and positive reinforcement in the act of doing whatever it is, be it doodling or singing or math. The Kennedys won’t. In fact if they’re not lucky enough to have a good teacher, and one who can put a lot of this into perspective for them, they will tend to be inhibited. The worst time is when a Riley and a Kennedy are friends and sign up to learn together, and Riley takes off and Kennedy’s left sitting there feeling like she’s somehow Deeply Flawed. And in fact the whole Doctrine of “It’s Just About How Hard You Work” will in and of itself become part of what inhibits them, because they will watch the Rileys - and even the Annas, Anna in this metaphor being the Totally Normal Student who never really exists - grasp things faster than they do, even if they ARE working hard. And this will HAPPEN. They will watch this reality happen in front of them … and then people say to them “oh, it’s all about how hard you work, dear.” And it’s like being gaslit. (Well, to be fair: it IS being gaslit, just without malice intended on the part of the people doing it.) And that message is horribly horribly toxic: here Kennedy is, and she IS working hard, but she’s still not progressing as fast as Riley or Anna no matter what she does! But it’s All About Hard Work, right? So that must mean that no matter how hard she THINKS she’s working, she’s actually just lazy, or doesn’t want it enough. It’s clearly a moral flaw in her. I actually have, personally, really good luck with teaching the Kennedys because I literally have this conversation with them when they come to my studio. I actually outright tell them: firstly, anyone who has working vocal chords can sing. Anyone who has working vocal chords and the ability to distinguish audio pitch can even sing on key in tune! But some people have an easy time learning this and some people have a hard time, and sometimes which it is has some relationship to, say, “early exposure to music” or whatever but sometimes it seems to be utterly fucking random - pure luck of the draw. You CAN SING. The capability is there. And if you want to we will find out how to make it happen. It might not happen as fast as for some other person, it might take more work, it might take more care, but that’s okay: that’s not your fault, that doesn’t mean you’re NOT working hard, but it does mean that here at the beginning we do things like recalibrate victories, we make your progress about YOU, not about Riley or Anna. But I’m also not going to gaslight you or make you feel like you’re either delusional or somehow especially So Terrible You Don’t Fit In The Rest Of The World: sure, I’ve got some Riley-types who walk in here, noodle around, and we go on to Art Songs. They exist. So what? Tall people exist. People with broad shoulders exist. People with dark hair exist. Physical embodiment and neurology hand out luck of the genetic roulette with no interest in outcomes. If you’re born blonde, it’s always going to take more work for you to have brown hair than someone born with brown hair, but much like dyeing your hair to match what you want, we can train the muscles of your voice and the neural pathways for hearing to do what you want. The differences between Rileys and Kennedys are very small. If Riley didn’t discover she liked singing and Kennedy worked at it for years then no, Riley would not “start out” as good as Kennedy is after those years. And you can be Riley and if you DON’T do the fucking work, the Annas of the world especially will blast past you and leave you in the dust. But on the other hand the Rileys get this wonderful cycle of positive reinforcement that does often start from a place of their coincidental physical embodiment giving them a slight leg up. And pretending that’s not the case does a big disservice to the Kennedys. We just absolutely do need to reframe that for what it is (a tiny fundamental difference and then a HELL OF A LOT OF “this is fun so I practice more so I get more validation so I -” and more or less no moral meaning at all), what it doesn’t mean, and how to compensate for it. I love this explanation because it agrees that practice is required to develop any skill, but acknowledges practice never exists in a vacuum. Practice itself is subject to its own stimuli, circumstances, and feedback that can affect its quality, speed, and repeatability. A person whose practice is a positive experience with results that satisfy their need for visible progress will want to practice more, and will achieve greater returns than someone for whom practice is associated with negative feelings, a lack of detectable progress, and is unenjoyable to the extent that becomes a laborious chore. Do you think mental health has a role in it too? Like do people with mental health excel or stagnate vs the norm? Does it affect how people view their skills?I bring this up because I have mental health issues. I used to draw every day, almost every waking moment because I loved it. Yes, I was still depressed as hell, but people liked my work. Now that I’m older, I’ve seemed to fall out of the ‘child protegee’ with so much potential or whatever, and now I’m sub par from other artists my age. No one likes my art, I have no drive to draw anymore, so my skill has stagnated.I think another factor is the environment you grow up in. Of course money will affect what you can get and the teachers, but I’m going to focus on parental influence. I had one parent that loved my art, and one parent that always thought I could ‘do better’ and would look down on it, disappointed. I lived with the parent that always demeaned it. That’s rubbed off and now how I look at my art still to this day. I loathe it. I don’t want to show anyone my art in fear that they won’t like it. So I always look at it so critically it upsets me.Now, art never feels good. I’m never happy with the outcome, and I never finish things anymore because I get so depressed about how it’s turning out half way through. Adding to that, I rarely draw, it’s just become more of a burden. When I was young, I wanted to make a career out of my art, and I really thought I had potential, but now I’m just a grain of sand among diamonds. I’m not good enough to get into a school, I don’t have this wild and crazy look everyone loves, I don’t draw for fandoms or whatever, so I’m overlooked at best. Before, art used to hold promise and would help me through depression, now it’s just a source of a broken dream.This has gotten to the point where instead of trying to better my art, I’ve downright dropped it as a viable source of income. I have bills to pay and I feel that it’s better to try to focus on something else than try to make better a skill that never rewarded me.But then again, I’m also very feedback oriented. I’m not just content for drawing for myself, I want positive feedback to feel like what I’m doing is worthwhile, or else I’m just wasting my time with a bygone fever dream.Mental health ABSOLUTELY has a role in it. And I feel very much the same.(I also need feedback, I crave feedback. People keep saying this is less than ideal but like … I don’t know how to not need it. It’s a thing I need. Sorry not sorry, I need feedback and validation to feel fulfilled.)Another thing that contributes to the illusion of innate talent is underlying applicable skills. I teach fencing, and some beginner students will right away seem miles ahead of other beginner students. This is because those “more talented” students usually have one (or both) of two advantages: a) they have a higher level of physical fitness- maybe they run, or play other sports, or lift. They are able to hold the en guard position for longer without muscle fatigue, and therefore can practice good form for longer, and so they advance more quickly because they get more practice in. B), they have done some other physical activity that requires technical training. Sports, dance, posing, or even just more roughhousing with friends. They come in already used to knowing how to put their body into foreign positions, and they already have the experience of correcting their form or imitating someone else’s stance. They are more aware of their bodies and where they are and they already know how to look at someone else and change their body position to look like that. They already know how to self-monitor for things like “bend your knees” or “keep your foot pointed forwards”. They aren’t innately more talented, they just have previous life experience that taught them useful skills and let them practice simple things like body awareness that are fundamental to fencing. BTW this plays into my theory on why a lot of girls are initially worse at sports than boys. Girls get conditioned at a young age to be careful, to not be physically rough, and to play quiet, non-physical games. Too many times, girls start playing sports without having had practice at using their own body, something which boys get growing up. -- source link