good enough to fool myself

So yesterday my mom was cleaning out some old files and found my school records from 3-5th grade. We moved from California in November of my 3rd grade year and I transferred from a private school there to a public school here. After being there for a year I transferred again, this time for academic reasons, to a private school off island. Once 4th grade was complete my mom had had it with the state of education in the area and started what is now the Carden Country School. It was in our home those first couple of years and was a big change for us as a family and for me as a learner.

In my recently recovered files, I found standardized test scores and grades from these 3 years in school as well as teacher comments and samples of work. From my 2nd grade class there was a report card that was straight A's with the exception of PE which I got a B+ in. Not surprising that that was my field of "struggle". In 3rd grade I was apparently "considered for an accelerated and extended program but not selected due to an SCAT score." Whatever a SCAT is. I have never been good at taking tests. This will be proven later with my SAT score (960) in which I earned over 700 points on the verbal and the remaining on the math. Luckily Cornish was progressive enough to not look at SAT scores. So then in 4th grade we took the Stanford standardized tests and I scored the reading level of a 10th grader with the vocabulary of an 11th grader and was in the 99th percentile for listening skills. Again where is the low? Well in my mathematics operations and properties I scored below average with my 18/34.

Ok bla, bla bla nobody cares about your grades from elementary school. Right. But here is the interesting part and why I'm even bothering to write any of this down. Looking at teacher comments, every teacher all 3 years, at a public school with 30 kids in the class, at private Christian school with 1/2 that, and then "homeschooling" with my mom as my teacher they all said I needed to make more of an effort. "Jamie's workhabits have lessened in quality. She needs to be willing to stretch herself." "Jamie's vocabulary is excellent, but she needs to work much more carefully on her written French. It is a challenge she seems reluctant to assume." "...she needs to improve on double checking her work."

So I've always thought of myself as someone who tries really hard at what is in front of me, but then as I really think back and am honest with myself I guess I am pretty put off by hard work. I just want things done fast and don't have a lot of patience for small details or always doing things the "right" way. For instance I'm sewing today and getting super frustrated because I just make stuff up and it doesn't work and then I get mad instead of just looking up how to do it in the first place. I want things to be pretty and functional, but am usually adverse taking the time for good craftsmanship. It makes Josh furious how I rush through things and say that's good enough.

So I'm feeling pretty discouraged because I am seeing myself as someone who I didn't really think I was but maybe really am. And no, you can't reassess your whole identity because of some stupid papers, but I do find myself often frustrated or annoyed with washing the walls before you paint them or getting out the tape measure and level to hang a picture or soaking the seeds over night before you plant them, and therefore skipping the preliminary steps.

So where does this haste serve me well? I don't know. When I was teaching I tried to see all my students short comings as a positive somewhere. Obstinance meant that they were thinking for themselves... etc. But how can not wanting to work hard or essentially being lazy be an attribute? I am not writing this fishing for compliments, but more as a confession or admittance that a lot of times I do a pretty good job at lying, even good enough to fool myself.