• she/her

Principal investigator at an undeserving midwestern university. I am ill-tempered and well-endowed. Beware.


I have a Cohost for art and writing!
cohost.org/lab-reports
profile pic by Xīn Jīn Mèng!
cohost.org/xinjinmeng

Just thinking about how some parents want to micromanage not just how their own kids are taught in school, but how everyone's kids are taught, and find myself wondering how they reached this point. Because I have to imagine their experience as kids in school was a lot like mine: I had no thoughts about what was going on except wanting to get through the day and go home. Seriously, looking back, your whole primary and secondary school career involves tuning out your teachers as much as is humanly possible. I was more concerned with avoiding bullies than anything any teacher had to say, with a dash of 'are my clothes cool enough?' What's the fear on parents' part, that their kids will learn lessons that last a lifetime? I wouldn't count on it. Most people I know forgot most of that shit once they graduated. Once in a while I make myself solve a quadratic equation, just to prove to myself that my brain hasn't turned into oatmeal, before resuming my contented ignorance. All my important, most memorable lessons were ones I learned from other kids. Could it be that parents feel their own lives are disappointing, hopelessly out-of-control trainwrecks, and so they invest everything in controlling their kids' lives and triumphing vicariously through them? could it be that, for them, it's all been downhill since leaving high school, so for them that's all that matters? Signed, a micromanaged gifted kid


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