What Were You Useless At?

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Spoonbill
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What Were You Useless At?

Post by Spoonbill »

In my own light-under-a-bushel way, I suppose I was a reasonably bright kid at school, though nobody ever told me so or had any expectations of me till my final year, when one or two masters finally woke up to the fact that there was a small but nonetheless measurable amount of electrical activity going on inside my head-bone. My performance had always been adequate-bordering-on-lazy until my Grecians' year and I'd been perfectly comfortable with that.

But man was I useless at Mathematics. And as for Chemistry, I never understood one word of it (in fact I was convinced that the masters made it all up as they went along, just writing on the blackboard any old sh1t that came into their heads on the spur of the moment) and to this very day I remain unconvinced that chemistry isn't just a load of old cobblers. Does this mean I was some sort of semi-moron?

What were your own non-accomplishments? In which areas of academe and sport did your talents most definitely not lie?

And have you managed to gain any ground in the intervening years? Astonishingly, I've twice wiped the floor with the opposition in Civil Service numeracy tests, so maybe that particular part of my brain was simply late in evolving. Or perhaps I was deeply traumatised by an Arithmetic For Babies book at a formative age and consequently it took decades for me to win back my self-belief. Who knows?

Did anyone here leave CH illiterate but go on to become Professor of English Literature at Princeton?
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by LongGone »

I absolutely agree with you about the brain not being prepared for specific subjects until later in life (which subjects and when are probably different for each person). I was absolutely mediocre in everything and it was not until my late 20s that my brain ‘woke up’ and I went from teaching high school to being a research scientist within five years. I see a similar transformation in others, and really believe that trying to force a student to learn something before their brain is ready to accept it, is a waste of everybody’s time.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by michael scuffil »

Though I say so myself, I was good at almost everything academic. But absolutely and totally useless at 'manual', and ditto in every sport except athletics, where I would rate my performance as 'fair'. There was no later flowering of my competence in either.

I don't think I have a natural talent for sawing straight lines, but as for sport: if you're forced to play sports you detest, you're likely to detest sport as such. I think this is a pity.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by Avon »

Marching. I had two left feet. However, I used to avoid lunches - I've never been much of a lunch person and I just took a nap instead.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by dsmg »

I am very grateful to CH for the chance to play so many sports. I loved it and still play 3 or 4 some 35 years later. I never got to 1st XV or XI standard as I was a bit of a Jack of all trades but managed to play to a decent standard.
As for being useless, like Spoonbill I could just never understand Chemistry. I blame Phallic Mathews! In fact Physics was a similar story although I remember some teacher (Burr maybe) using my notebook as an example for all in the first year as I was good at drawing up experiments and had nice writing. By the third year I was totally lost and managed to get a grade 9 at O level (the lowest I believe apart from U which Keir Timbrell got). I seem to remember we studied two types of Mathematics and I was quite good at the Geometry type.
Anyone get taught Latin or Ancient History by Tom Keeley ? In the late 70s it was a joke as we used to run down the corridor of the Classics Block to escape when we heard his footsteps coming 20 minutes late. An E (lowest pass grade) was the result in the A level. Music I was also useless at, couldn't play a single instrument and felt jealous of my friends in the band. I did sing quite well and Duncan Noel Paton chose me to play the lead in some musical play. I had a good French accent although I was terrified of Johnny Stein (Johnstone I suppose) and his Reproductions. I remember the French Oral O level like it was yesterday. Some visiting woman examiner asked me about my family. I got myself up a cul-de-sac when she asked me about my brother. I said he worked on a farm and she asked me what he did to which I replied after a very pregnant pause, trying to think of how to say feed in French, ´Il mange les animaux`. Still, I got a grade 4 and since then have gone on to be fluent in Spanish and make a living from translating and teaching.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by Mid A 15 »

It would be easier for me to post what I was good at as "useless" was my default state!

I managed to sit through a year of German with "Pongo" Littlefield and a shorter course of Russian with Roger Biddick and learned nothing.

I suspect it says more about my linguistic incompetence than their teaching incompetence though.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by michael scuffil »

Mid A 15 wrote:
I managed to sit through a year of German with "Pongo" Littlefield and a shorter course of Russian with Roger Biddick and learned nothing.

I suspect it says more about my linguistic incompetence than their teaching incompetence though.
With those two, I wouldn't be so sure!
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by michael scuffil »

dsmg wrote:I
Anyone get taught Latin or Ancient History by Tom Keeley ? In the late 70s it was a joke as we used to run down the corridor of the Classics Block to escape when we heard his footsteps coming 20 minutes late.
By the late 70s TK was quite a serious figure compared with the early 60s. After his first year, his classroom walls had to be repainted to cover the ink. But I was taught by him as a grecian. I wasn't a classicist, but my Cambridge entrance exam required me to do a Latin-to-English translation. They sent me some trial papers, and it turned out the Latin was medieval (shock, horror!). So I had a weekly 20-minute private session with TK during someone else's double period (20 minutes he would doubtless otherwise have spent sleeping.)
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by Jo »

Sport. All sport. Well, except swimming, for which I actually swam for my house a couple of times - not exacly a distinction as I think there were about six or eight of us in the relay team out of a house of around 36, at least a quarter of whom would simply have been too young and not physically strong enough to compete at senior level.

And art - I had no talent, didn't enjoy it, and couldn't see the point of anyone trying to teach me.

Like Michael Scuffil, I was academic, and particularly enjoyed languages and history. I found maths and sciences more difficult and less interesting but I got two maths and a biology O level and I doubt I would have failed physics or chemistry if I'd been required to take them.

What I've subsequently realised - and I suspect this more something innate than CH's fault - is that I am good at learning and storing knowledge, but less good at acquiring new skills. My first inkling of this was scoring full marks in Grade V music theory despite only reaching Grade IV piano and really not being very good at playing (though I quite enjoyed it). The hardest thing I have ever had to learn to do was drive, though that was 30 years ago and I'm now a confident and (I think) competent driver. The greatest thing I learned from learning to drive was that I could actually learn to do difficult things. That was a huge realisation for me, naive as that sounds now.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by Avon »

michael scuffil wrote: By the late 70s TK was quite a serious figure compared with the early 60s.
By the 80s he was back to being a joke. Seeing as this is a thread on uselessness it's also worth mentioning his wife, who put the Borgias to shame with her attempts at mass poisoning.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by fra828 »

Scripture-I once got 1% in an exam for writing my name and getting nothing else right!..Oh dear..it's nothing to be proud of.. :oops:
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by dsmg »

A teacher once wrote at the bottom of one of my History essays:´Anything related to fact seems totally coincidental`.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by eucsgmrc »

I disliked all sport, being fairly weedy and poorly coordinated. However, it had to be done, so I learned to tolerate it and to accept - even to exploit - my reputation for uselessness. "They" learned to put me in teams which didn't matter, or to send me on runs (when I could keep going, slowly, for long distances). After a while I found a niche as scorer for cricket, where I was occasionally useful - for instance, by seeing the opposition bowl a no-ball, returning the signal (which the umpire had not in fact given), and persuading the other scorer that my version of events was correct. This was not difficult. Other teams put up scorers who were even more ignorant of cricket than myself, were too bored actually to watch the proceedings, and didn't really know how to fill in the scorebook.

Finally I found a sport that suited me. It involved lying down and staying as motionless as possible: shooting. I had quite an enjoyable time practising at the Kithurst range, and competing at Bisley. I was moderately good at it for a while, but never the best in the team. I have not fired a full-bore rifle since, but I retain some regard for the SMLE mark IV, a weapon of elegant and brutal simplicity.

Actually I was rubbish at lots of things. I was clever (by schoolboy standards) and lazy (by any standards). Maths was OK, because I could figure things out by logic on the fly. I was "disappointing" at anything that required learning lists of facts. D S Macnutt, for instance, taught me Latin for a year, but didn't bother to bully me as he did those who he thought were worth turning into classical scholars.

I was, of course, useless in the manual school - but it did leave me with some awareness of skills and techniques. After I left school, I discovered that most of my contemporaries had no idea at all of such things, whereas I had at least seen them done and (blunderingly) handled the tools. Just one more advantage that I gained from CH.
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by Alexandra Thrift »

I was useless at hitting balls....be it with any kind of bat ( rounders, cricket) , raquet ( tennis, badminton, squash ),stick ( hockey )....but, mysteriously and inexplicably, I was good at table-tennis.

It broke my heart that I wasn't good at sport ( I couldn't run fast either) and I kept trying in the mistaken belief that one day I would improve, thus prolonging the heart ache.

Even before C.H. , at my primary school , they invented a special sports day award for me for " the person who tried the hardest" ( and never won anything...left unspoken ). :(
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Re: What Were You Useless At?

Post by Spoonbill »

Remember the Periodic Table? What the hell was that all about, eh? 'Cos I'm sure I don't know.

As for Latin, I was completely incapable of either translating English into Latin or vice versa and yet I always scored 100% in Latin vocab tests, which must've been hair-tearingly irritating for Chris 'Bomber' Nicholson who was obliged to keep giving me Mars Bars as prizes in spite of the fact that I was a dunce.

As for so-called Art lessons with Bronco Lane, I seem to remember that most of our time was devoted to flicking paint onto each others' shirts. If anyone had actually attempted Art, it would only have got paint flicked onto it.

Eucsgmrc, I'm a bit staggered that to this very day I still know what annealing is, having had it explained by Keith Stratton in the forge whilst making the obligatory toasting fork when I was a nipper. I've never tried it again, though, nor risked an attempt at welding. Not much call for toasting forks round here.

Dsmg, remind me which DNP-produced musical extravaganza we're talking about here. I'm struggling to remember seeing you doing your thing.
Last edited by Spoonbill on Mon Jul 16, 2012 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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