#so hw and shit were just guidelines to me

[robustcornhusk]

i was talking to housemate the other day about ~growth mindset~, specifically one particular study + Spurious Survey Correlations [1].

their reaction: oh. it helps to value effort and not just intelligence? oh. this explains... a lot, actually.

i had noticed i hated working on cs projects in public; i use paper to organize my thoughts more than most people i observed, it took me longer to understand concepts than most people i observed, i had to look up more (and be informed of more) libraries than most people i observed [2]... 

in short, i hated working in public because i didn’t want to appear not-smart to the people around me, who were all Known Smart[4].

i’m still doing it, too, frustratingly. fake housemate is learning [subject] and knows i have had interest in [subject], and is probably confused why i shy away from all discussion of it. it’s because i don’t want to appear stupid.

if i am learning something - that is to say, moving from a state of Uneducated to Educated - i hide it from people around me, because i must not let them know i am Not Smart... which seems very backwards.

[1] ‘The more you describe yourself as having a growth mindset, the higher your life satisfaction (r = 0.18). Bizarrely, describing yourself as thinking hard work matters more than talent doesn’t predict life satisfaction at all. It’s just the words “growth mindset”.’

[2] due to either poorly worded restrictions, accurately worded but bad descriptions, or my hyper-literal misunderstandings, i would also interpret hw guidelines that were meant to be “don’t cheat” as “do not use any reference other than your textbook and lecture notes”[3], so like, did i need to look up a c library? i’m shit out of luck, that’s cheating

[3] cohuman, who is like Certifiably Real Good, like was a TA for Hardest CS Class at our university, says they also have Feelings about the cheating guidelines, so i’m not just sour-grapesing it. 

[4] i never see this particular complaint about open offices for some reason, but people might not want to publicly complain about this.