Raw Dogging it Without Brain Suspenders

Have you ever looked back at something you accomplished and thought:
Okay, but why did that have to be so damn hard?

Not — I wish I had done better.
Not — I could’ve been more successful.

Just…
Was everybody working that hard, or was that just me?

Because I did well in school.

I made good grades. I graduated. I went to college. I built a career I’m proud of.

So this isn’t me imagining some alternate universe where I would’ve cured cancer if somebody had just handed me an extra 30 minutes on the ACT.  I did fine. Actually, I did more than fine.

But here’s the thing:
I worked my ass off for those grades.

School didn’t come easily just because my report card made it look like it did.

Maybe you were that kid too—the one who looked responsible and capable from the outside, but inside was basically held together by fear, over-preparation, and sheer force of will.

Because that was me.

Here’s a fun fact for you—I do not math. (& yes, I used it as a verb because, damn!)

I vividly remember sitting in the back of the second-story classroom in A Building at Germantown High School, plugging every shortcut I possibly could into my TI-83 calculator. Right alongside the calculator version of Mario Bros., which we somehow managed to get loaded onto those things because apparently that was a perfectly reasonable use of teenage brainpower.

And somehow nobody questioned the fact that I could figure out how to get a video game onto a GRAPHING CALCULATOR but still needed every mathematical lifeline that calculator could legally provide.

But I digress.

Looking in the rearview, it’s so obvious to me that the real fuel behind those grades wasn’t some beautiful, internally driven love of academic achievement.

It was fear.

Full stop.

F.E.A.R. in all the big letters.

Fear of disappointing my parents.
Fear of disappointing my teachers.
Fear of not doing what I was supposed to do.
Fear of getting in trouble.
Fear of being the kid who wasn’t measuring up.

And I want to be clear about something here: nobody was standing over me demanding straight A’s or expecting me to have the Midas touch.

That pressure came from me.

I was the one who decided doing well meant always doing well.
I was the one who turned expectations into standards and standards into rules.

No one handed me that scoreboard.

I built it myself.

You know that kid?

The one who wasn’t chasing the A because she loved the A.

She was chasing the A because anything less felt like letting somebody down.

So I figured it out.

I studied harder.
I over-prepared.
I pushed through.
I developed systems for my systems before I even knew that’s what I was doing.

And when that works?

From the outside, it just looks like success.

Good grades.
Responsible kid.
College-bound.
Nothing to see here.

Nobody stops to ask what it’s costing you to keep producing that result.

And when you’re the kid doing it, you usually don’t ask either.

You just assume this is what everybody is doing.

That’s the part that gets me now.

Because I know what accommodations can look like.

I know what happens when we stop asking a kid to prove what they know in one specific way.

And suddenly I can’t help wondering:
What if I’d had extra time on an exam?

Not because I didn’t know the material.

Because I know the answer.

I know I know the answer.

But have you ever watched an over-thinker take a multiple-choice test?

I looks a little something like this inside their head:

OBVIOUSLY A is right.
But… B could technically be right if they’re asking it this way.
Unnnllleeesssss… they’re testing this other concept, in which case maybe C is what they’re actually looking for.
But why would they word A like that?
Was that intentional?
Is this a trick question?
Wait.
Go back.
Read it again.

WHAT TF DO YOU WANT FROM ME?

Meanwhile, somebody three desks over bubbled in A four minutes ago and has already moved on to Question 23.

Must be nice.

And what if some of those exams had been given to me verbally?

Have I mentioned I’m good at talking?

Because I am very good at talking.

Give me a conversation where I can explain what I know, talk through my reasoning, ask a clarifying question, and make connections between ideas?

Now we’re in my wheelhouse.

Put the exact same information on a timed multiple-choice test and suddenly my brain has decided we’re preparing arguments for the Supreme Court about the various possible interpretations of Question 17.

Same brain.
Same knowledge.
Different way of showing it.
That’s what I wish I had understood back then.

I had the drive.
I had the determination.
I had the ability.

What I didn’t have was any clue that the way information was being presented—or the way I was expected to demonstrate what I knew—might not have been the way my brain worked best.

And when you don’t know that?

You assume everybody is working this hard.
You assume everybody’s brain is doing what yours is doing.
You assume you’re supposed to just figure it out.

So you do.
That’s what I did.
I figured it TF out.
And I’m proud of that girl.

Truly.

But knowing what I know now, I also want to grab her by the shoulders and say:
Girl. Somebody could’ve given you some suspenders.

Because that’s basically what accommodations are, aren’t they?

They’re not carrying someone.
They’re not doing the work for them.
They’re not magically turning something difficult into something easy.
They’re just the suspenders your brain needs to keep its hypothetical pants up while you do the actual work.

Meanwhile, I was apparently out there raw dogging education with my brain pants around my ankles, thinking everybody else was doing the same thing.

They were not all doing the same thing.

Some people had suspenders.
Some people knew they needed suspenders.
Some people had adults who knew they needed suspenders.

I didn’t even know my pants were falling down.

And yes, that’s funny.

I’m absolutely going to laugh about the hypothetical brain pants.

But there’s something underneath the joke that isn’t funny. Because I don’t really wonder whether I could’ve been more successful.

That’s not the question.

I wonder whether it all had to be so hard.

Would school have been less exhausting?
Would I have enjoyed certain subjects more?
Would I have taken different risks?
Would I have believed different things about what I was good at?
Would I have spent less time assuming that struggling meant I simply needed to try harder?

Maybe you know that feeling too.

Looking back at something you did accomplish and realizing the achievement was real—but so was the unnecessary struggle underneath it.

There is no way to rerun the experiment.

I don’t get to send little Susan back through school with accommodations and compare the results.

I only know what she accomplished without them.

And maybe that’s the part worth paying attention to when we talk about kids who are “doing fine. Sometimes they really are doing fine.

And sometimes they’re busting their ass to produce a result that looks fine to everybody else. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

I succeeded. I’m proud of that.

But knowing now that there were tools that might have made some of it less unnecessarily hard?

Yeah.

I really wish somebody had handed that kid some dang brain suspenders.

Susan

.05¢ for the 🫙: You can be capable and still need support. Support doesn’t make the work easier—it makes it possible without breaking yourself to do it. Those two things were never opposites