This starts as the usual “don’t worry about your GCSEs kids, no-one will ever care about them” piece with an amusingly cringe photo of the author aged 16, but then Ian Dunt gets into this really interesting idea that studying for them is a transformative moment between childhood wonder and the drudgery of work.
I am therefore grateful to GCSEs. Not because they taught me anything - I learned absolutely nothing - but because they instructed me on how to work. And in particular they taught me how to work for sustained periods of intense activity.
My mum, who was herself a teacher and therefore quite invested in my education, was clear that I was doing fine at school until I had to write essays. We could put this down to all manner of things that were not diagnosed in the 1980s - dyspraxia, AuDHD, you name it - or we can go with the contemporary observation that I just wasn’t “achieving my potential” for some reason (subtext, laziness), but the end result was I never really learned how to study. A Levels were a bust, university (as a mature student) was a disaster, and while I taught myself to write, the writing I do now tends to be pretty automatic. I write to figure stuff out. These things I publish are my workings and any skill I’ve mastered is in making my thought processes interesting to read.
In fact most of the things I’ve presented to the world as an artist have been workings, either byproducts and evidence or performances that brought people in. I’ve often wanted to do a book (or book-shaped thing) but the work involved is beyond me.
I struggle to read and absorb long or complex texts. Most of my reading is article-length at a general level. I occasionally want to go deeper but I just can’t do the processing needed. Eventually I decided this is where I was so I might as well make the most of it as an omnivorous dilettante, and honestly I’m pretty happy with this outcome. The world needs generalists, I reckon. People who can try to see the bigger picture of how it all fits together. I can play that part.
Now, I don’t know whether this is a disability of my part or just a lack of learning how to do it at a formative age. If it was the latter I wish there’d been a teacher who knew how to train my brain to do the work. It’s one reason why I’m so happy for the neurodivergent kids today. Not that they’ve got it easier. Fuck no. But that they have a better chance of someone understanding and helping them.
Or maybe I’m just lazy and shit at doing work. Lol.
- ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s Tiny Desk concert — He’s having so much fun it’s infectious.
- Kermode reviews Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma — I can’t remember when I last saw him so happy.
- Watching TikTok and Instagram Reels videos deactivates the brain’s cognitive control network, study finds — Realising that my online consumption patterns, while probably of dubious cognitive value, do not involve endless streams of short video. Grateful for small mercies.