I’m another one who can’t ask for help, even if I’m choking. I’ll solve it myself. Really. Don’t worry about the bubbles… I’m just looking for the drain…
I have a foreign language related ineptitude: well, two actually. First, I have grave difficulties with non-Roman alphabets, or syllabaries. Second I seem to have just one slot for foreign languages. So, when I tried to learn a third language, it ended up coming out as some kind of French-Japanese hybrid. Which no one could understand. Not even me. :eek:
And then there’s just people. I’m totally inept with people.
Office Politics. I loathe with every fiber of my being those that participate in the side-taking, back-stabbing, cohesive environment-destroying practice. When someone tells me something, I expect it to be the truth, not some ploy to further a contingent’s agenda. Consequently, I suck at it, in no small part because I refuse to try and understand it or even participate.
Speaking–I have a huge glitch in my brain where I just don’t talk well at all. People think I’m incredibly stupid, but it’s just that I cannot express myself.
I suck at chess and trick-taking games (like Bridge, Hearts, etc.)
After a approximately a year of diligent study in which I made a dozen very poor ones, I have given up on ever learning how to properly make pie from scratch.
But the area where I am totally, painfully inept is remembering people’s names. I’ve tried all the tricks, like being sure to use their name soon after you learn it, making up mnemonics, etc. I’m hopeless. I have completely given up on trying to learn my students’ names. If they come to my office hours every week, I’ll probably be able to produce the correct name after a couple of months. Otherwise, forget about it. I used to make the effort, and try to hand back the right paper to the right person in class. Now I realize that’s just a waste of time, and I just return papers in a pile for each lab group, or call out each person’s last name in turn and make them raise their hands. In social circumstances? It is to laugh. People just have to get used to me saying, “I’m so sorry, but would you please remind me what your name is?” and referring to other people as, “You know, that woman with the short curly dark hair who wears that red ski jacket thing.”