Teen Years: A Few States (of Mind) Away
When I was thirteen my family moved to Beverly, Massachusetts, because of my father's job. I'm sure this won't win me a school visit, but I found that New England town to be pretty backwards.
The junior high I attended in Hicksville had a thousand kids in each grade. My new junior high had a student body small enough so that everybody was in each other's business. In Hicksville, our clothing styles were strongly influenced by the Sixties, the counterculture, and the hippie movement. (Some of my classmates had seen the musical Hair on Broadway, even though it contained nude scenes.) In Beverly, both the boys and the girls wore denim "barn coats" with a corduroy collar and straight-leg blue jeans, news of the bellbottom having apparently not made it this far north. Hicksville had had a fantastic school system in which we started learning foreign languages in the first grade. My new town seemed to devalue academic accomplishment, as if that kind of achievement put one person unfairly above the others. (Although excellence in sports was celebrated. Go figure.)
Although I had the right face and body to fit in, my mind and personality didn't. The kids seemed to like discussing only a few limited topics, in a teasing style, while I liked far-ranging discussions on things like religion and feminism. I could go on, but suffice it to say that I had culture shock moving to a small, insular community from the worldlier suburbs of New York City. The situation caused me to develop an outsider perspective that I still have forty years later. I tend to observe and analyze new social groups as if I'm some kind of anthropologist, and when I join any new group I take a good long time deciding which subgroup I'm going to ally myself with.
In high school I especially enjoyed the creative and performing arts. I got accolades for my writing, I acted in school plays, and I sang in all three of our high school's choruses: the big general chorus, the smaller concert choir, and the technically demanding madrigal choir. As a teen I did well in the subjects I liked and didn't pay much attention to the others. To this day I work harder at goals I set for myself than at any goal someone else sets for me. That's called being intrinsically motivated.
At graduation time Beverly High School had the usual valedictorian and salutatorian. But it also had an unusual tradition of selecting a speaker from each of the school's four houses, or main buildings, on the basis of a speech competition judged by teachers. I won the contest, beating a whole array of people including the football captain, who may have been used to having everything handed to him. The day my name was announced as the competition winner, I felt a sense of destiny: "I have this special ability, and nothing else really matters."
Next: College
When I was thirteen my family moved to Beverly, Massachusetts, because of my father's job. I'm sure this won't win me a school visit, but I found that New England town to be pretty backwards.
The junior high I attended in Hicksville had a thousand kids in each grade. My new junior high had a student body small enough so that everybody was in each other's business. In Hicksville, our clothing styles were strongly influenced by the Sixties, the counterculture, and the hippie movement. (Some of my classmates had seen the musical Hair on Broadway, even though it contained nude scenes.) In Beverly, both the boys and the girls wore denim "barn coats" with a corduroy collar and straight-leg blue jeans, news of the bellbottom having apparently not made it this far north. Hicksville had had a fantastic school system in which we started learning foreign languages in the first grade. My new town seemed to devalue academic accomplishment, as if that kind of achievement put one person unfairly above the others. (Although excellence in sports was celebrated. Go figure.)
Although I had the right face and body to fit in, my mind and personality didn't. The kids seemed to like discussing only a few limited topics, in a teasing style, while I liked far-ranging discussions on things like religion and feminism. I could go on, but suffice it to say that I had culture shock moving to a small, insular community from the worldlier suburbs of New York City. The situation caused me to develop an outsider perspective that I still have forty years later. I tend to observe and analyze new social groups as if I'm some kind of anthropologist, and when I join any new group I take a good long time deciding which subgroup I'm going to ally myself with.
In high school I especially enjoyed the creative and performing arts. I got accolades for my writing, I acted in school plays, and I sang in all three of our high school's choruses: the big general chorus, the smaller concert choir, and the technically demanding madrigal choir. As a teen I did well in the subjects I liked and didn't pay much attention to the others. To this day I work harder at goals I set for myself than at any goal someone else sets for me. That's called being intrinsically motivated.
At graduation time Beverly High School had the usual valedictorian and salutatorian. But it also had an unusual tradition of selecting a speaker from each of the school's four houses, or main buildings, on the basis of a speech competition judged by teachers. I won the contest, beating a whole array of people including the football captain, who may have been used to having everything handed to him. The day my name was announced as the competition winner, I felt a sense of destiny: "I have this special ability, and nothing else really matters."
Next: College
