From the very start, school stuff was easy for me. Don’t believe me? Call my mom. She’ll tell you. What?? Don’t make me have to post my mother’s number on this joint!
When I went to kindergarten, I wasn’t supposed to be there. We were moving from NY to Detroit. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting on my mother’s lap and the lady asked how old I was. I said five. Thing is, I had just turned five that month. This is a great time to remind people that it’s THAT time of the year again!! My birthday. Amazon Wishlist!!!!!!! Anyone who knows anything knows there’s a cut off date. If a child doesn’t turn 5 before October or November (differs from district to district) s/he is placed in the lower grade. I wasn’t supposed to enter kindergarten because I’d just turned five. But I guess all that didn’t matter because I went in for the second half of the year and still managed to color and share circles around those future short bus riding kids! Hence my being named valedictorian. Again, don’t make me have to give out my mother’s number online!
When I went to first grade, I did pretty damned well for myself. I was nestled comfortably in a gifted and talentd program and I blossomed. So much so that by third grade my teachers wanted me to go on to fifth grade. My mother refused because I was already a bit younger than my classmates. Also, she’d been skipped as a child and while she kept up, socially it was a different story. Then she got to be a fast ass but that’s a different entry. It was right around the end of third grade that our school became ‘regular’ and all the neighborhood kids came.
Then in the middle of fifth grade, I took a test and landed in one of the best schools in the city. But right around here is when I lost interest in school. I’d realized that doing just enough to get by required no effort. Then there was high school. Also is a ’special’ school. And you all know about undergrad and grad school.
Now I’m a full-fledged adult. And you know what? My ass can’t spell. Willie B. Gibson, my sixth and eighth grade English/Reading teach would have a fit to know that all of her efforts were wasted on me. But at the same time, she’d be delighted to know that I know that she might have known that it’s not in the spelling and grammar that makes one smart. Or at least not by my definition. It’s the ideas.
When I worked at the nerd factory, I worked with and interacted with some brilliant ass people. And you know what? They never wasted syllables. That’s right. They wrote in plain, simple sentences. No 13-letter words when a 5-letter word would due!
Warning: The follwoing statement(s) might could offend or just out-right piss folks off.
I didn’t go to school all those years to learn just to spell. I have Serenity23 for that. I didn’t go to school all those years to make sure to never make a grammatical error. I have Xquizzyt1 for that! And I don’t judge someone’s level of intellect by their spelling or grammar. I don’t even judge it by their attending college. I pay close attention to their ideas. And if a person can have an exchange, verbal or written, and lay out their ideas in a logical manner, that’s enough for me. Nevermind I might not agree. Nevermind that their logic may differ from mine. But if they can explain it and help me connect the dots, then I’m cool. And don’t go including people with mental illness in this. I know they’re crazy and can justify their lunacy.
I was with someone recently who made one of those I-can’t-believe-he-doesn’t-know-X Y-he-got-degrees statements. And you know what? The people who always say this type of shyt? Who are they? People who don’t have degrees! When I want to use perfect grammar and spelling, I hand stuff off to someone else. Someone who gets paid to ensure my verbs are conjugated!!! Someone called an administrative/executive assistant or writer–at least in my field. And I know this is the case in other firleds. You want some good ideas? Come to me. You want Ms. Crabtree’s perfectly punctuated prose, go somewhere else!
I just think people who do not have degrees get caught up in trying to make having a degree meaningless. And you know why?? Because in the no-degree haver’s mind, that degree means lots. This same chick who made the statement about a college educated man not knowing something she knew was recently ‘let go’ from her job as girlfriend because, you guessed it, no degree. Sure there were other reasons but the one that seems to be repeated the most was her lack of college degree.
One of the greatest things I learned from all of my schooling was not facts and proper grammer. It was learning to take the information out there, sort it out, and formulate my own thoughts and ideas. It was the small life lessons that still help me today. Problem is, teaching and encouraging people to form their own ideas is dangerous. So for the people who are still caught up in people who have degrees not spelling everything perfectly, take a step back and look at their ideas. And if you think your not having a degree makes you less than someone who does, you’re wrong. I know society tells you this and you might try to compensate in other ways, but truth is, if you’re a good person, you can be one with or without a degree…Oh and get an education!
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