Name: Stephanie
Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Course: Bachelor of Arts Majoring in Psychology and Gender Studies
Theme: Challenges
I used to be what you might call a “Gifted Child”. I was academically brilliant. I loved to learn and thrived in the structure of primary school and early high school. I always felt as though learning offered its own rewards, but teachers also offered their own extra rewards and incentives. I remember 8th grade history class when my teacher said that we would be learning about the Aztecs and at the end of the module in the last class we would play trivial pursuit and there would be chocolates and toys as prizes for those who did will. I was top of my class. I wanted to win that game. After that though, things changed.
As I progressed through high school, those extra rewards disappeared and the way the teachers spoke to us about the purpose of education changed too. We were no longer learning for fun and excitement, but because we had to achieve the best scores for our school certificate and then we had to make sure we got a high enough University entrance score otherwise our career prospects would be severely limited. We were no longer motivated by joy and excitement, but by fear of failing. That’s when I feel like my symptoms of ADHD really became a barrier to my learning. When learning was no longer fun, I found myself being distracted by things that felt more fun. I found I was falling behind and became more fearful and the more I felt fearful, the more I felt shame. I had been told all my life I was smart and now suddenly I wasn’t.
After high school I was too scared to go to university straight away. I took some time off to have fun and entered as a mature aged student once I forgot about how scary and stressful education was and my memories of how much fun it was had become stronger in hindsight. At the beginning of my degree everything felt fresh and exciting, so I was more motivated but then the stress kicked in and again. It was no longer that I was learning out of fun, but I was learning to try and achieve the best score so I could be accepted into the best post-graduate program.
I was finally diagnosed with ADHD about halfway through my degree and have been grateful for the USYD disability services and ability to have some extra allowances, but the methods by which I am taught haven’t changed. I still must try my best to keep up with a curriculum that was not built with my abilities in mind. I am constantly stressed, and I must struggle, working harder than everyone else to achieve even close to the same standard. I try to keep myself motivated by thinking of my future career. I want to be a clinical psychologist so I can help people, like myself, to achieve what they want to be able to achieve, in a world that is not built with them in mind.
I’m in therapy myself and it’s been helpful. One thing that has been incredibly motivational for me is my psychologist telling me regularly that I would make an incredible psychologist. She tells me that I have a wealth of knowledge from my personal experience and that she is frequently impressed by my insight and in fact, she has even learnt some things from me which she has been able to utilise to help guide therapy with her other clients.
The thing is, I know I would be an incredible psychologist. I know it. But first, I must get through my degree. Before I can be judged on my capacity to therapeutically guide someone to become the best version of themselves, I must be judged on my capacity to retain and regurgitate academic knowledge at a level that is difficult for me to achieve in the little time given in a semester. I often wonder if I will make it to where I know I can be. I look at the grade averages prescribed to be able to enter the post-graduate programs I want, and I feel deflated. I wonder how many other people there are like me at USYD who would be fantastic in their desired career if they were assessed in a different way? We may not be as academically gifted as others, but what if we were assessed more practically?
If instead of an exam, I were asked to write an informal story about all the things I’ve learnt over a semester and how I’ve been able to apply them to my everyday life and how I would apply them to my career in future, I am sure it would become clear that I have learnt an incredible amount and I have passionately engaged with the course content. But students aren’t assessed on their passion. They’re not assessed on their enjoyment. Students aren’t assessed on all that they have learnt and how but are assessed on having retained very specific details and being able to recall them in a highly specific way.
An exam might ask me to recall the name of a process that is described in a vague manor, and suddenly my mind is blank. Perhaps if the exam asked me to detail what I know about this process in my own words, I could show how much I have learnt and how much I do know. But that’s not the question, is it? It doesn’t matter if I know everything else there is to know about this process if all they want to know is that I can recall the name of it.
The biggest challenge to me in my education is that I could make the things I’ve learnt sound like beautiful poetry and inspire passion, but I am assessed on my ability to relay information in the most dry and uninspiring way. I am constantly left wondering if the fact that I cannot achieve that is because I’m stupid? Or is it because the way students are assessed is stupid and outdated? I wonder how the landscape of education and qualified and passionate people entering the workforce might change if people could learn and be assessed in different ways that might align better with their abilities? I would be thrilled to see USYD leading with new innovations that could lead to higher student and staff satisfaction and an increase in the number of high-level graduates as a result. What a wonderful way to celebrate diversity that would be.
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