When I was a senior in highschool, I took microeconomics. Before senior year I never tried in school. Senior year I started to care about intellectual things and started trying. I hated my teacher and openly read the textbook in class instead of listening to her lectures.
When it came time for finals, I had a good grade in the class, some sort of high A, and had already been accepted to college. I figured out that if I don’t do the final project, my grade would be a B.
I told this to my teacher. She was so angry at me and said she’d fail me. I said she can’t, at least not without going against the grading rubric she had established in our syllabus.
I explained to her that I was frustrated because she was missing the most important concept in all of economics: incentives! How can she design the incentives and then be mad at me for acting accordingly? What kind of economist does that? Moreover, the whole system is set up with bad incentives. She should thank me for exposing them, recognize that I’ve grasped the important concepts, and give me an A.
At least that’s the story I like to tell myself. And other people! It’s not the truth though. The truth is I have major public speaking anxiety and didn’t want to do the public speaking the final project would entail. That’s all it was. I don’t even think I grasped the centrality of incentives at the time. I think I learned about that about a year later once I discovered LessWrong.
Well, even that paragraph isn’t really the truth, but it’s something I tell people sometimes too. The reason I tell people these untrue stories is when I figure the truth doesn’t matter much and because the story is just meant to convey a point, not be a description of who I am as a person. This comment itself is probably being made less clear and more awkward by this last paragraph, and I considered not including it for that reason. But things like that are a bit of a slippery slope. I noticed myself starting to believe the fake stories to some extent, and that’s probably not worth the price of telling a less awkward story to people who I don’t care about.
Based on this one comment I wonder whether you found a way to get round the uncomfortable public speaking thing. Whatever the case, your writing is refreshing, and interesting to read!
That’s really awesome to hear, I appreciate the compliment! I don’t think I ever got over the public speaking anxiety though. I say “don’t think” because it’s been such a long time since I’ve had to do public speaking, so it’s possible that it has gone away, but I doubt it.
I have a similar story.
When I was a senior in highschool, I took microeconomics. Before senior year I never tried in school. Senior year I started to care about intellectual things and started trying. I hated my teacher and openly read the textbook in class instead of listening to her lectures.
When it came time for finals, I had a good grade in the class, some sort of high A, and had already been accepted to college. I figured out that if I don’t do the final project, my grade would be a B.
I told this to my teacher. She was so angry at me and said she’d fail me. I said she can’t, at least not without going against the grading rubric she had established in our syllabus.
I explained to her that I was frustrated because she was missing the most important concept in all of economics: incentives! How can she design the incentives and then be mad at me for acting accordingly? What kind of economist does that? Moreover, the whole system is set up with bad incentives. She should thank me for exposing them, recognize that I’ve grasped the important concepts, and give me an A.
At least that’s the story I like to tell myself. And other people! It’s not the truth though. The truth is I have major public speaking anxiety and didn’t want to do the public speaking the final project would entail. That’s all it was. I don’t even think I grasped the centrality of incentives at the time. I think I learned about that about a year later once I discovered LessWrong.
Well, even that paragraph isn’t really the truth, but it’s something I tell people sometimes too. The reason I tell people these untrue stories is when I figure the truth doesn’t matter much and because the story is just meant to convey a point, not be a description of who I am as a person. This comment itself is probably being made less clear and more awkward by this last paragraph, and I considered not including it for that reason. But things like that are a bit of a slippery slope. I noticed myself starting to believe the fake stories to some extent, and that’s probably not worth the price of telling a less awkward story to people who I don’t care about.
Based on this one comment I wonder whether you found a way to get round the uncomfortable public speaking thing. Whatever the case, your writing is refreshing, and interesting to read!
That’s really awesome to hear, I appreciate the compliment! I don’t think I ever got over the public speaking anxiety though. I say “don’t think” because it’s been such a long time since I’ve had to do public speaking, so it’s possible that it has gone away, but I doubt it.