KindLadyGrey -> RE: I fucked up my LSAT. I am going to cry. (12/22/2007 11:02:40 AM)
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Okay, this post pushes so many of my buttons I don't know where to start. . .but I think the best place to start is the place that might actually help you. So if you are still keeping up with your thread, copy this reply, and when you are allowed to speak with your master, read/show it to him. quote:
Despite having an IQ which is within the top 1%, I nearly failed out of high school. The guidance counselor told my parents not to send me to college because it would waste their money. The other kids and teachers publicly discussed how I would never graduate and fail in life. Which was essentially true until Master corrected this. And its not like I am gifted in some other way. I am not good with my hands (Master is). I am not some artist. I am just a technically book smart person that doesn't even do well in school. Dear Kitty's Master, I am a teacher. I actually teach these tests, among other things. What kitty said above has LEARNING DISABILITY written all over it. As a teacher I am not legally allowed to diagnose students with learning disabilities, but what I can do is suggest that their parents have them evaluated, and Sir, that is what I am doing to you. As the person who is in charge of kitty's life, and who I assume wants the best for her, you may want to look into having her evaluated for a learning disability. Students with learning disabilities can still achieve very highly if pushed, like scoring a 167 on their LSATs, and nevertheless feel like stupid failures all the time like kitty obviously does. Master/slave relationship aside, I have seen this pattern many times in students of all ages. Even though they may be smart enough to figure out how to compensate for the learning disability and achieve at a reasonable level, their self-esteem ends up completely broken because people keep saying things like "You are so smart, you just don't apply yourself" and so on and so forth. By the time they reach adulthood, even if they are very high achievers they are convinced they are lazy and not good enough to run their own lives. They end up depressed, despondent, and reaching vainly for the intermittent approval of others. The Master/slave relationship you have with kitty is quite obviously very important to her for this reason. It is a vehicle within which she can seek the approval she needs to prop up her self-esteem. Of course, as you can see from the way she overreacted in this post (I am sure you are not going to leave her for her LSAT score, since you seem like a reasonable person willing to invest a lot of time and effort into kitty's well being), this reliance on you for her self-esteem is a double edged blade that can also hurt her when she fears your disapproval. This may be an essential piece of your Master/slave relationship and I have no intention of making a judgment call about that. But what is very important is that you send kitty in to get professionally evaluated for a learning disability, and if one is found, that you help her start getting treated for both the pragmatic problems related to the disability and the emotional fallout of dealing with feeling like a failure for so many years. I know you think you know what is best for kitty and that you might think your firm guidance is enough to help her achieve anything. Unfortunately, no matter what you help kitty achieve, it will never make her feel truly accomplished. If you like kitty this way, then by all means ignore me. If you want her to be happy with herself, I hope you will take my advice. I could be totally wrong, but if I'm not getting kitty evaluated and treated for a learning disability may turn her life around. I will share an anecdote about this to illustrate how getting such an evaluation can help. I have a girlfriend who has always been an overachiever. She got decent (but not perfect) grades in school and did decently well on standardized tests. Her family and friends though, knew how brilliant she was, and never understood why it was so hard for her or why she wasn't doing better. She struggled through college, convinced that she just wasn't as smart as other people and that's why she had to work so hard. When she was 25 she was diagnosed as dyslexic. It didn't make school any easier for her, although she was granted some academic accommodations, but it allowed her to let herself off the hook for being "stupid" or "not trying hard enough" and begin to focus on the things she really wanted instead of trying desperately to be as perfect as everyone around her thought she should be. She completed a very competitive Physical Therapy program at Georgetown, one of the top programs in the country. I'm not saying that kitty is dyslexic. There are many different kinds of learning disabilities that have the same emotional fallout. It is the pattern of helplessness in the face of achievement that I recognize, not any specific kind of learning problem. I don't know kitty or her work well enough to begin to talk about that. This may be a M/s thing, but I don't think that it is. It is obvious that kitty felt this way about her achievement before she ever met you. As I said before, I can't speak to any specific learning disability, but if you want to talk more with me about my experience dealing with LD students please feel free to do so. Hoping in vain this might actually help, KindLadyGrey
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