Anna M. (IEE) about seeing potential in people

I can sense people. I look at a person and understand a lot about them. It’s not like I dig deep or anything.

To get information about someone, it’s enough for me just to talk to them.

I’m currently teaching at a school — I enjoy explaining things to the kids; I can see how their eyes light up. I’m interested in finding out what each of them is capable of. I work with them once a week, but I already know who can do what. It’s immediately clear what kind of task you can give to whom. I constantly organize different competitions so they stay motivated and don’t just keep drilling the same thing. I say, “Let’s learn these rules now so we can take part in such-and-such competition.” And I know that this student can handle one type of contest, that one another type, and that one won’t manage at all. One might really want to, but simply doesn’t have the strength. Another has no desire. You can see it right away: someone has a limited ceiling — they’ll keep hitting their head against it, jumping, but they won’t break through. And someone else has practically no limits — just an enormous space, a big potential — but they’re too lazy to push off the ground, and I can see that. Children need different approaches. Some need help breaking through that ceiling, others need a good push so they’ll jump. To me, all of this is obvious.

You can see it in a person — it’s hard to believe, but their intellectual abilities are visible in their behavior. Here’s an example of limited potential — a girl in my university group: we’re discussing what great goals we should set for children in school. She says, “Well, look, everything has changed now, they take the Unified State Exam, there’s no essay anymore, you just train them for the test, and that’s it.” And I understand that her potential is limited. That’s it — she’ll train them for the exam and teach her students the same way she studies herself: she studies until the first test, and then she’s no longer interested. And why isn’t she interested anymore? Because she has no inner potential. If she had it — even a spark — things would be different!

And if there is no potential, then what is there to burn? And so this limited interest, limited emotional range, limited intellectual capacity. And if you ask her to make some great discovery — you can never expect it, not in her whole life. A person’s deep potential is visible through conversation.

<...> I judge people; it even seems to me that I put some kind of label on them. There are certain qualities in people that, for me, define their entire personality. For example, he doesn’t work and constantly says, “No money, no money…” Yet he’s an amazingly deep and interesting person. Still, it’s behavior unworthy of a man. I put a label on him: “Not a man!” There are others who say, “I’m with this guy at the country house, with that one on the yacht; I have this and that, this and that…” To me, he’s a “big talker.” I can say about one girl from my group: “A narrow-minded person.” But after putting a label on someone, I don’t reject them; I know how they can be useful to me, to society, or to some particular matter.