The Good Student
She was always a good student in school. If she had points taken off on an assignment, she could tell you years later what those missed points were. She thought of school as a competition. Against other students, sure, since she wanted to be the best, the teacher’s pet, the award winner if there were awards or recognition to be had. But against herself even more. Like with golf, she was always trying to strive for improving her own score. A score where the rules, the assessments, the challenge was constantly evolving, constantly growing more difficult. But she liked this challenge. She became very skilled at learning the new rules, learning what was expected of her. She had a reputation to uphold with others and with herself.
She always wants to give the right answer, the most intelligent answer, often the more complicated answer because she believes what is smart is rarely simple. But since she is no longer at school and there are often several options for one problem in life, she is naturally hesitant. She has several overlapping ideas at the same time and finds it difficult to sort them out and engage with one without being sure. She no longer has the professor’s reassuring look to indicate that she is on the right track. So she strategizes to put as many answers as possible into one, which confuses her. In class, her place was clear, she was the best. In life, it is no longer the teachers who judge her, who evaluate her, but her boss, her colleagues, her employees or her collaborators. The new assessment criteria are undefined, the test materials evolving and tricky, relationships multi-layered and subjective, and competitions often informal and malleable.
She suffers from not finding the same comforting structure that placed her in power: the one who knows how to answer questions, who has understood the lesson, and who completes the requirements at an A level. Because of this reputation and security, enjoying life was never her strong subject; she avoided risk and uncertainty.
She wrote brilliant papers and developed impressive work habits which make her an efficient and results oriented employee. She leads her career at full speed as long as she is in an environment where her qualities are valued. She knows how to comply with constraints, she has done it since she was very young; she meets and exceeds goals, takes files home on weekends even if she had social plans. She does not lack courage, self-sacrifice or intelligence. She is well suited to her world of achievement.
She studies. She strategizes. She knows who she is. She knows who she wants to be. She has her five year plan for how she intends to get there.
Her skill of figuring out everything quickly makes her impatient with anyone slower, and she quickly becomes rigid when she feels the situation is getting out of hand. Slowing down is difficult for her, she needs a perpetual abundance of chaos around her, she resents people interrupting her words and her ideas to bring her back to herself. Paradoxically, she has a low self image because she has always depended on the gaze of others to give her self value: the approval and confirmation from the school, from her superiors, from her friends. Her personal life suffers when others do not live up to her expectations. She dismisses this as their failure.
The worst thing in the world is to be bored and glimpse the emptiness of existence.
Oh yes, there is no question that her acquaintances do not do their duty well, but she finds it difficult to dialogue with them. Unless she is in an emotional relationship, where she gives them what they want. And when they really cross the line she becomes rigid again, gets annoyed and lashes out at them, which she subsequently regrets. She gives in to their whims and they take the lead in her life.
Her rigidity comes out frequently, and she can have contemptuous and brittle thoughts when people fail to live up to her intellectual expectations. This she does not realize. She is not generous with others, those who are not in her inner circle, and she is wary of people in general. She did not achieve her various accomplishments to hang out with people who lack a good education or who talk too simply.
She seeks out the company of other brilliant people like her because of her permanent mode of comparison. She has a sense of competition more than collaboration. Her collaborators find it difficult to work with her because she is full of ideas but has a tendency to disperse. She is used to her own work ethic and sets the standard high. She creates disappointment around her because she cannot be everywhere, do everything, so she is forced to give up certain commitments. But they know that she is rigid, so they do not dare to say things to her face, especially since she would probably know how to respond by complicating things in order to hide her own confusion. She likes to play with crafting words and expressions; she has a polished vocabulary. She thinks the more complicated and numerous the words, the deeper the thinking. She tends to be superficial because she never stops to explain simple things: that “goes without saying.” She goes over them very quickly, otherwise it would waste time, which she hates. Deepening is not her cup of tea: she prefers to multiply concepts and get lost in them. That is why she often misjudges people.
She loves novelty because it gives her new trivia to learn, like a new lesson where she will be able to show that she is at the forefront of knowledge.
She works a lot on the implicit, because she has developed a second nature to understand the codes and to mold herself to them. She loves to mold herself into something new, into a different context, which makes her quite comfortable in society, including with people she does not like very much. She knows how to convince herself that these contacts are valuable even if she would not go for coffee with them. She does not understand why some people do not strive for excellence. Just as she did not understand the goof offs or the rebels at school. However, there were times when she secretly envied them. It would be nice if she did not always feel obligated to do what is expected of her. But no, she has the status of a good student to defend, a brilliant and open colleague, creative and efficient.
She finds it difficult to devote herself to others because she thinks that devoting her time to this would not be useful for her own development. She does not consider that she could get to know herself better through others because she is so complicated and deep. So she will always be dissatisfied with the judgments others make of her, she finds them reductive: she is instead thinking of her future plans to progress, to advance, to expand. Her “potential” is her focus.
Most people do not notice her lack of self confidence because she takes refuge behind her knowledge. She uses her knowledge as a filter between herself and others. If you start asking her about herself she will stop you sharply, telling you that armchair psychology is low brow or that things are “more complicated than that.”
What could these people possibly understand about what she thinks, let alone what she is? Either way she does not want to see what she is, she would be too scared that she would hit rock bottom quickly and be disappointed. She likes to see herself as a bottomless well of intelligence and possibilities.
She admires these artists, these creatives who create interesting ideas out of nothing. She takes up again the piano that her parents forced her to learn when she was a child. With pleasure this time, even if her fingers stiffened somewhat with age. Time, age, mortality, she does not want to think about them. Like many other things. She developed this skill in school: an ability to put aside everything that can cause pain and is not useful in the short term. She did a bit of philosophy, but saw it more as a task in juggling concepts than an existential exercise. She can handle that later. After she wins the competitions.
Original French text by Jérôme Lecoq found here: http://www.dialogon.fr/articles/la-bonne-eleve