Falling Down

by Lucy S.

In his classic 1989 book Lives On the Boundary, Mike Rose, a professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education, describes this experience in a Bay Area literacy program he visits:

Sitting in the classroom with Ruby, Alice, and the rest, you think, at times, that you're at a revival meeting. There is so much testifying. Everybody talks and writes about dreams and goals and “doing better for myself.” This is powerful, edifying — but something about it, its insistence perhaps, is a little bit discordant. The exuberance becomes jittery, an almost counter-phobic boosting and supporting. It is no surprise, then, that it alternates with despair. In their hearts, Ruby and her classmates know how tenuous this is, how many times they've failed before. Somebody says something about falling down. Sally says, “I've felt that too. Not falling down on my legs or knees, but falling down within me.” No wonder they sermonize and embrace. It's not just a few bucks more a week that's at stake; literacy, here, is intimately connected with respect, with a sense that they are not beaten, the mastery of print revealing the deepest impulse to survive.

These are people in a community education program to improve basic reading and writing abilities. I can only imagine how hard they have to struggle to not succumb to that sense of sinking defeat, because I still struggle with it, and I am now in my last semester of a master’s program. It is hard to predict what may set it off. It happened to me just now when I emailed some feedback to another graduate student who gave a presentation in our class last week. I had somehow lost the paper telling us how to give feedback on the presentation, so I figured I would just do the best I could, going by the guidelines for the presentations themselves. Mostly, I just wanted to give him some information that might be useful for his specific paper which would be coming out of this presentation. It’s a small class and he’s a very easy-going, funny guy, so I wasn’t worried. Then my professor asked if I could send him a copy, and I thought, “Oh, no….” I was embarrassed to have to send it to him. And I began worrying that I had not assessed enough, had not provided any critical feedback which would tell the student how he might improve. But I hate assessing in that way. Or at least, I hate doing it without much of a relationship with the person. I so much prefer to just talk about their ideas and bring up some related ideas. 

These thoughts took me back to my own presentation of the week before this student’s. I felt like I had really regressed. I had done presentations that were at least better than this last one, but for whatever reason, this one really threw me. I couldn’t understand how to do what he wanted us to do. I kept having anxiety attacks over it, crying, wanting to just tell him I wouldn’t stay in the class after all…  This was such an unreasonable response, and I had wanted so badly to be in that class. In the end, I wrote what I would say, because I figured I could write better than I could do anything else at that point. And then I read it. It was not very good. I think that some of the historical context I brought in was too peripheral. On the other hand, I was profoundly relieved to just have gotten through it without giving up. My deep interest in the content of our readings and discussions that night overrode my focus on my own inadequacy – such a welcome tonic to those feelings of shame and anguish.

But all of these thoughts and experiences can spiral quickly at times into the deeper collapses inside. It is a short step for me from thinking that my feedback was inadequate and my presentation still poor even in my last semester of a master’s program to thinking that I am still just not good enough and thus not suited for this. These activities are what teachers and scholars do, after all. They give talks. They teach in front of groups. They provide critical feedback, and yes, they must assess. Like it or not, they must even grade. How could I grade? I hate grades. And I think about how it was during my first semester back to finally finish my B.A., doing a directed study (independent study) with the professor about whom I wrote the previous essay that I said that my fear has always been that I am “smart, but not smart enough.”  What I meant was that I often think that I am smart enough to love these studies, to feel drawn to keep trying, and to want so badly to just able to be accepted and to be a part of these ‘conversations,’ and yet that I am not smart enough to pull it off beyond a certain level.

Sometimes I do not know who to turn to when I feel this way. Or rather, there are many who I can turn to in a general sense for mutual care, and that helps tremendously, but in terms of these specific efforts, I think people often do not know how to respond. Some people assure me that I’m so smart, that of course I can do it, that I always say these kinds of things and yet I always make it.  Sometimes this helps. It depends on how far down I am.  And I can especially understand this when it comes from people for whom a B.A. sounds like an almost impossible personal accomplishment, because that is how I too felt for a large part of my life. It was only a few years ago that I graduated with a B.A. after so long. I well remember the years when I felt that people with B.A.s had some special inside knowledge. And so to those with little or no college, my fears may seem groundless.

My oldest son’s father was the only boyfriend I ever had who went to college, and when I was about five months pregnant, I remember getting a short letter from him saying that he supposed that after a long time, his “feelings of animosity might dissipate.” (This was in response to me writing to say that maybe after a while, he wouldn’t hate me or at least the baby and maybe they could have some kind of relationship, which was in response to his previous statements about how the idea of having kids repelled him and how he would hate me and the baby. We had broken up shortly before I found out I was pregnant… but that is enough of this diversion…) The point is that I remember in those emotional letter-reading moments having to look up “dissipate,” and feeling this profound sense of inferiority. And I read all the time, even then!  But somehow, I had missed “dissipate.”  

I think that many of us have these formative painful personal histories carved into our psyches, or maybe laid on, layer after layer after layer – yes, I think that may be a better metaphor – and so when we lay new layers of knowledge, accomplishment, acceptance, and affection over the thick mass of inadequacy and pain, those new layers can be pretty thin compared to the acidic mucky layers underneath. For those of us who have had many negative experiences and whose positions remain precarious (emotionally, intellectually, materially), we find ourselves falling and crashing through into despair too easily.

Another possible response is impatience and perhaps annoyance. Understandably, people may think that we all have our difficulties and that there are greater tragedies than someone’s graduate school insecurities. Or they may find it difficult to empathize if they do not have these same difficulties.

My father, although he did not graduate from high school, is in many ways a better thinker than I am (and he knows history far better than I do), but he feels deeply insecure about doing anything even mildly mechanical (or carpentry-related) and about his handwriting. It does not matter how many times I or anyone else has told him that it doesn’t matter, that he should value his intellectual and speaking abilities (yes, he is also a much better speaker than me). He jokes that it all began with Mrs. James, the 2^nd grade teacher who used to grab his hair and hit his head against his desk or the chalkboard because he couldn’t write adequately, saying to him, “You ugly, ugly boy!”  But this really happened. His twin brother and his lifelong friend were in the same class and tell similar stories. My grandfather used to tell my dad and my uncle they were useless when it came to anything mechanical. Again, my dad has relayed in somewhat lighthearted ways that his father used to take the neighbor kid fishing and leave them at home because he thought they were too stupid. (And sometimes bitterness and pain slips in when he says something about this.) My dad is very good at making his past and sometimes present anxieties and miseries funny (and so am I at times – though not as good at it as he is), but when he says that we have no idea how many negative experiences he has had, and that it’s a miracle he’s functional, I realize more and more that he has needed many layers of kindness, acceptance, and a sense of competency to accumulate in order to not fall into deep depression.

What I am saying is that I believe it is mostly a misreading to believe that people who talk about struggles with deep insecurities and related existential pain should just ‘get over it,’ or that they are in some sense just feeling sorry for themselves and wanting others to do the same. People who have been put down and shamed for a large part of their lives do not need to experience yet more shaming and rejection in order to ‘buck up.’ They need kindness, warmth, acceptance, and perhaps some step-by-step specific guidance on how to get better at what they struggle with.

Another danger in talking to people about these things is that we make ourselves more vulnerable by doing so. There is the very real possibility that people may respond by conveying in some way, “Wow, yeah, you really are inadequate.”  Some people are just downright mean, and will kick you when you're down. Others don't mean to be hurtful, but still this message may come through. Not that they would use those words, but if they do not relate to my particular weaknesses, their facial expressions, tone, and verbal responses may say that this seems strange or irritating or stupid to them. Furthermore, in highly competitive places like academia, in which education and other experiences related to it (such as working as a class assistant or tutor) are always made into artificially scarce resources, there can be the danger that admitting to any deficiencies may result in others deciding that they agree: sadly, you ARE incompetent. Any or all of these responses from others in turn may deposit further layers of negative experiences, or may at least make us less likely to trust and be open again.

What makes me angry about this at times is the way that some forms of competency and wisdom are so clearly valued over others. Sometimes I think, I would really like to see some of these people having to take care of a baby – or how about two or three and some toddlers, too – as I did for years – and having to get other things done at the same time, like major work on houses that weren’t livable, or long distance moves, or so many day to day needs.  I have stuck up for people who were being put down just because they weren’t used to babies and didn’t know how to handle them well (this especially still happens to women in some circles because of gendered expectations). But what I see so often is that the abilities we have – those of us who have cared for babies and young kids for years as our work in the world – are devalued. Sometimes we are even looked down on for having done this work. When I encounter people trying to figure out how to care for a baby or interact with a kid, I try to show them (and maybe explain some approaches) without putting them down. (The ways in which caregivers are perceived and treated is another topic which I am writing about.)

What I am getting at in my case is that I have not been giving presentations for years. I have been doing other work, some of which has included caring for my kids and those of others. (And I have been working on homes – mine and those of others – and growing food, and counseling friends, and doing a lot of unpaid or low-paid work). I think that at least some of what I learned actually helps me in these academic studies and might make me a good teacher (if I ever get to teach in a college). If I am not very good at presentations now, it does not mean that I will never be good at them. But we give one presentation in a semester per class. I have read that a person has to do something eleven times to make it a new habit (and this would be over a relatively short period of time). I think what I really need is for someone to slowly teach how to do a presentation, and then to have us actually practice it somehow right there as we are being taught, so that the whole thing could become demystified and have the tension drained out of it. If I ever get to teach, I want to do that for students.

But of course, this itself is a defense I am constructing in my mind against my own criticism and possibly that of others. No one has threatened that I may have to leave the program. I have had a great deal of support. I have done things in these past few years that I did not believe were possible five years ago.

All of this makes me wonder about times when I too may have responded without enough sensitivity and kindness to someone else’s insecurities, difficulties adjusting, or other kinds of hardships and pain. I wonder, when I am around people and I start falling down within myself, what do I look or sound like? Do I look or sound pretty much the same to others? Do I just seem unfriendly or spaced out or self-obsessed?  And what does someone else look or sound or write like when they’re falling down inside that way?  

In that recent presentation of mine, I shared that theorist Frederic Jameson has characterized our contemporary age (postmodernism) as “an information society producing social relations with cordiality but without depth” (Richter 1927). I keep thinking about that phrase: cordiality without depth. This describes so much of U.S. society. I want to resist this, to help create less surface cordiality and instead relationships of far more depth.  But how do we do this? I want to know how to do better, both at handling my own collapses within and at responding to others who are falling down inside – responding with kindness and a willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt, even when I don’t know whether they are falling down.

I find myself wishing we could do some sermonizing and embracing like Ruby and Alice and Sally and the others in the Northern California literacy class did. Mike Rose says that the exuberance seems jittery at times, that it is “an almost counter-phobic boosting and supporting." But the strength of the encouragement and mutual care has to be commensurate with the levels of despair always threatening to bury them.  And I wonder: what happened to those who attained greater levels of literacy and continued their education? Did they have to learn to make do with a lot less of what they created in their literacy class? And if so, why? Why can’t we keep pulling each other back up? Why not cheer each other on? 

I am not sure if it is wrong to compare the struggles in graduate school to the struggles of people in a literacy class.  But it seems to me that maybe we have more to gain from finding commonalities than from insisting that we cannot begin to understand each other's different struggles. And so many of us are in economically precarious circumstances with little hope in sight, despite our efforts. Education is certainly for far more than economic uplift, but in a capitalist society in which it is frighteningly easy for many of us to fall down completely and not only internally, it is hard not to become discouraged that as hard as we try and labor, we cannot count on a basic level of well-being. For all of these reasons, we need to forge solidarity and an ethic of deep care as we hold onto each other and demand better from ourselves and our society.

I do have people who pull me up and cheer me on and give me hope and faith in so many ways. I am fortunate and so deeply thankful – and still, I start to fall down. What about those without anyone to care about the efforts they make in their lives – their labors, their creations, their hopes, and their collapses?   

Works Cited

Richter, David. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2007.

Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared. New York: Penguin, 1989.