Today we have a guest blogger - Paige Ferrell. This is her story:
I’ve never really put this out there publicly, but I’m a recovering perfectionist. I know, I know. You’re all shook by me saying that. I’ve only really ever talked about this to really close friends and chosen family, but I feel like it would be beneficial to really discuss my perfectionist story.
Let me set the scene. I’m three years old, talking about being the first one in my family to go to college. I’m five, and reading on a 4th or 5th grade level. I’m six, saying how much I want to be a teacher. I’m seven, teaching myself piano by pain-stakingly slowing down the built in songs on my Casio keyboard and watching which keys light up to learn Rondo Alla Turca by Mozart. I’m 10 and begging my parents to play flute in band, making perfect grades, perfect behavior record, and perfectly suited to drive myself crazy later on down the line.
It’s now 2012, my first day of college as a music major. I was playing flute in flute choir, but it wasn’t my main instrument anymore. I had made the decision to choose piano. In hindsight, I probably would have been ok had I chosen flute to be my main instrument, but that’s neither here nor there. While I was pretty good for someone who has never had lessons, I wasn’t music major good. Yet. I had a terrible teacher for those two weeks before I changed my major to elementary education. She berated me. She humiliated me. She made me feel so much shame because I did not have the resources to take piano lessons as a kid.
I was already one of those kids that had to have perfect grades. I had to have perfect attendance. I had to be perfect or somehow I thought I would lose value to the world. This teacher did not help matters. She made me feel like I was worthless. Like I would never amount to anything in music, let alone have the career that I do now. And on top of all that, I had family urging me to change my major because “we think you’re great, but there’s no future in music”.
After my first lesson with her, after she told me how bad I am at piano, after I had family tell me to put the flute away and I’m not that good, I worked harder for about a week. I’ve never been the type to have much give when someone was telling me that I couldn’t do something, so I gave it my all until my next lesson.
Here’s my schedule from that semester if anyone was curious:
6:00am- Wake up
6:15am- Eat
6:30am- Leave for campus
6:45-8am-Practice piano technique (Hannons, Scales, Czerny, etudes)
8-9am- Music Theory/ Aural Techniques
9am-12pm- Practice piano rep
(Grab Lunch super quick on the way to class)
12-3pm- Some gen ed classes
3-4pm- Piano Lesson
4-6pm- Cry and try to practice
6-10pm- Go deal with the public at McDonalds
10-?? Homework/ Practice piano some more
If you’re keeping score, that’s at least 7 hours a day I was spending at the piano. Normal people sleep that amount.
Anyway, that second lesson didn’t go much better than the first. I’m a terrible pianist. My hands still aren’t doing the right thing *eye roll* (come to find out they were) and I still can’t seem to make it work for me. I wanted to get it perfect, I wanted to make my teacher eat crow, so I tried for a few more days. About half way through the week, I break down in the practice room. Now I know that was a panic attack, but at the time it just felt like the walls were caving in and going to crush me. I ran out. I couldn’t get outside the building quick enough. The elevator was too slow, but the room was spinning and I didn’t feel like I could make it down the stairs without falling and breaking something. All I could do was wait.
The next day, I changed my major to Elementary Education, since dropping out entirely wasn’t an option. That would be like admitting they were right. That I’m not cut out for college or a future or anything. I didn’t touch a piano again until 2018, when I moved out of my parents house, and I didn’t touch my flute again until the 2020 quarantine.
The next 4 years were uneventful, but drove me crazy in a new way. In short, I thought some of the people I was in class with were annoying for one reason or another, and I didnt feel like I was really living up to the former gifted kid potential I thought I had. The point is I wasn’t happy here. The one thing I did learn is I LOVE working with kids.
It came time for me to do my student teaching in 2016, I loved my placement and my cooperating teacher. She is a great person and still to this day can call her a friend, but my perfectionism got the better of me. I got so obsessed with getting perfect evaluations, that I sat with the rubric while I was planning and made absolutely sure that I hit all my points for a perfect score. So much so that my lesson plans looked more like unit plans. I was constantly overwhelmed with the amount that had to be done in a 90 minute class. I was completely oblivious to the fact that not all lessons will lend themselves well to perfect evaluation scores.
All of this culminated in a meeting with the department head, my cooperating teacher, my advisor and me. Once again, being told that maybe I’m not cut out for teaching. Maybe this was too much for me. I’m not an effective teacher as things stand and I’m at risk for failing the semester. This was an absolute first for me, but now, there’s a realization brewing inside me. Because I’m trying so hard to be perfect, because I’m throwing everything and the kitchen sink in my lesson plans, because I’m so dang stubborn I’m not really accepting my cooperating teacher’s help, I’m about to fall flat on my face and prove them all right. I’m not good enough. I never will be and there’s no hope for a future. I believe it this time. I drop out 3 weeks before graduation to work an office job for the next 6 or 7 years.
Enter Kat Starr! I started taking piano lessons with Kat in 2018.
Here is where my journey really begins. I was at rock bottom again. My mental health was in the toilet, and I was beginning to think that I would never be good enough for anything. So at this point, I was looking for respite, acceptance, and refuge, and I turn to the only place I had ever truly been happy. Music. So I scoured Facebook looking for a teacher and I found Kat!
Kat and I worked through a lot together. It wasn’t really music at this point, because she’ll admit I was a better pianist than she was, but more like therapy. She helped me learn to accept myself exactly the way I am. And most importantly, she showed me that not all teachers will berate and humiliate you. Some show you unconditional acceptance.
Fast forward to present day. I went back and finished my Student Teaching and got my degree in Elementary Education. I had a much better time the 2nd go around, after realizing that sometimes good enough teaching is good enough, and my placement was a dream! These days I’m studying flute and fighting the “I don’t wanna” bug daily, but getting it done and teaching piano. All while recovering from perfectionism and trying to help my students do the same.
I have learned by this point, that sometimes, good enough is enough. I learned that regardless of what anyone else says I am enough. I don’t always feel it, but slowly that is where my mind ventures when I’m faced by one of these situations.
It has taken me years to learn that my value as a human is not diminished if I don’t get something perfect the first time. Does it still sting a bit? Oh heck yeah! Am I still fighting that little voice in my head that tells me I’m not good enough to do something? Uh yeah. I try to instill this in my students, too. We all have that little voice and 9 times out of 10, that voice doesn’t come from ourselves, but from the outside. That voice is a liar. It’s not true that you’re not good enough. You are. You can do this, whatever “this” is.
I often tell my students, “If you’re not feeling up to believing in yourself right now, let me do it for you. I’m not going to give you any new skill or piece of music that you can’t do,” usually over Scooby Doo fruit snacks, because they cure all ailments. Eventually, my hope for them is to start to believe in themselves as much as I believe in them.
I’m still on my road to recovery. I have students who haven’t even started on theirs. I want them to know that I see them. I know where they are in their journey. I want them to know that I will be their biggest cheerleader because I know how hard it is. I’ve made it my personal mission to make sure that if my students hear my voice in their head, they’re hearing positive, confidence building, things.
So if the voice in your head is telling you that you can’t do something or that you’re not good enough, don’t listen to it. You are. That voice is a liar. Go do the thing!