This is a long story, but I feel sheds light on education in general and why academia and educational institutions function so poorly that they drive the brightest into the dark.
More than once I have told by an academic advisor that I am going to fail
2nd grade was my first brush with failure, I started young and I failed English. I remember my parents telling me that I could not pass 2nd grade without learning to read. Yet, I showed them, I passed with a D! For some reason, being the independent 6 year old I felt smug knowing I had outsmarted them and by the middle of 4th grade I was in deep trouble. At this point I had to be enrolled in an after school tutoring program, since I still did not really know how to read. This was expensive for my parents and I regret it now (realizing how childish I was when… I was a child), but at the time I thought little of it.
I remember myself sitting in a chair and speaking the first time with the overweight, scraggily haired tutor across the table. She was explaining to me how this tutoring program worked and looking back it was perfect. The tutor laid out the process of how in this tutoring program for each thing we accomplish we receive a coin, we then can use our coins to purchase items. Simple things such as candy, to things such as tents, or radios, etc. The most expensive items were probably $50 – $100, but to me this was amazing! I worked very hard, saved all of my coins, and by my last day in the program I bought out all of the items they had available that day.
For me, what was important is achieving something. In this case I wanted to do what I perceived as the hardest thing to do, to buy out all of the “prizes” for doing a good job. Thankfully, (as a happy coincidence) I learned to read.
This was just the first of many challenges I faced, largely due to the fact I chose not to learn to read until late 4th – early 5th grade.