Literal Thinking

Anyone here like me who takes things literally? It's not even on purpose; it's just the way of life. Let me clarify what I mean by this. If you tell me, it's raining cats and dogs, I'm not going to go outside expecting actual cats and dogs falling from the sky. I don't want this to get confused with blatant ignorance to or the lack of knowledge of phrases. Now of course there are people who are from different cultures who have never heard things such as these. I am not calling them dumb, that is an actual excuse.

I wish I could pinpoint what it is that makes me take things so literally. In my mind, I am still trying to figure out how I am wrong in thinking. I mean for goodness' sake, if you tell me that you are going to pay me $50 an hour and I only get $35 an hour, I am going to ask you about it. But now I keep on hearing people say, "Oh you took me literally." Well, how else would I comprehend it? In my mind, a person's word is their promise. You don't have to put "I promise" in front of a sentence to make it a promise. If you say you are going to do something, or give something, or whatever, that is your promise. Because at this point you have set the expectation for others as well as yourself. I mean when you go to a job interview and they ask you if you can do something, you don't sit there and say," Oh wait, you took my resume literally?" How else is it supposed to be comprehended? Now that's where I get in a lot of trouble.

My mom has always told me that I am a black and white thinker and that I take things very literally. Now I have accepted that, and there's nothing wrong with that personally. But it is very difficult when communicating things or finishing assignments, because I take things in verbatim, and most people say things willy nilly. Let me give you some examples. As you all know, I am a college student, and part of college means completing assignments with instructions. I have a heck of a time trying to decipher those. Reading a professor's instructions to me is like trying to read the Rosetta Stone. Most of the time, I find that the instructions are inconsistent to what the professor has said in person. Or they are inconsistent with another set of instructions for that very same assignment.

In addition, I have also seen this pattern in my childhood-I mean the pattern of taking things literally. I remember being in 4th grade and I was walking with my older sister and older brother through the park and there were a bunch of high schoolers. They looked at me and yelled, "Do you want to be our friend?" And I yelled back, "Yeah!" My older sister had to redirect me away from them and said, "Trust me, they don't want to be your friends." I remember seeing my older brother laugh to himself as if I had embarrassed myself. I didn't see the big fuss. They asked if I wanted to be friends. To this day, I still have no idea if those high schoolers were making fun of me or wanted to do something bad to me or if they actually wanted to be my friends.

This way of thinking has gotten me into some big trouble-but not in the way you would think it would. Just recently, I submitted an assignment for a class that I thought I did fairly well on. To my disbelief, I got a 0 on that assignment for not following the instructions correctly. I was behooved, heck I still am. The assignment was to draft a deed. At the top of the screen, the assignment read, "Deed Draft." The instructions were stated as followed: Please see the attached sample deed. Revising this deed will be our next assignment. We will be going over the process for drafting deeds next Wednesday." I want you to keep these 2 words in the back of your head, "next assignment." This assignment was labelled Deed Draft, meaning, we would be drafting a deed, and the attached deed was a sample that would be revised for the NEXT ASSIGNMENT, not this assignment, the next one. So, in my mind, I am thinking, my professor gave us this sample deed as a guide. Afterall, the word sample means, "a small part or quantity intended to show what the whole is like." Other synonyms of the word sample are representative or illustration. Was it wrong of me to think that the sample deed was a guide? I'm still hung up over this.

Continuously, the sample deed contained a character, let's call her MJ. MJ's deed would be revised as the NEXT ASSIGNMENT. So, I drafted a deed, using the sample deed as a guide or an illustration. Then I downloaded the sample deed to have on file for the next assignment. Do you know what this professor did? He gave me a 0 and wrote on the feedback, "Please do the MJ Deed assignment and email the document to me by Wednesday 3/5/2025. I can accept a late assignment without a point reduction this one time. "Hold on a second, I thought the MJ Deed was the next assignment, as was written and stated. Keep in mind, I don't get notified that a professor has written feedback. It doesn't tell the student; it doesn't notify the student of any sort that feedback has been written. Now you may be saying, "Well Isabella you should've known since he graded your assignment, and you get a notification for grading." Hold your horses now. He didn't grade my assignment on the day that he gave feedback. He graded my assignment 4 days after he gave the feedback, which was unknown to me (the feedback, not the grading). So, not only did I not see the feedback, but I was also graded unjustly.

In addition, this assignment had been opened for more than 2 weeks. During that time, we sent in our deed drafts, for them to be looked over and revised if needed. I waited 2 weeks for this assignment to be graded. During those 2 weeks, the professor did not pull me to the side to tell me that I misunderstood the instructions. Those 2 weeks, I thought that I was set and that I did well, up until the very last minute that this horrific disaster was dropped on me. Did I truly misunderstand the instructions? Did I take them too literally? And if so, how else am I supposed to comprehend them when they should be clear as day. Let's be honest, instructions should not need to be deciphered. My mom told me that I took him too literally even after I had explained everything. But shouldn't instructions be taken literally. It's not like this professor is Shakespeare. There should be no room for wrong interpretation of instructions because they should be crystal clear.

This is just one way that my literal thinking somehow gets in the way of my success. I put my effort and sweat, blood, and tears into these things only to find out that something completely different was expected of me. Now this is the one that I can argue because it is written. Here is my main question: If the MJ deed was explicitly reserved as the next assignment, why would it be the present assignment? Things like this make my head spin. Why can't people be clear in their language? If I say that I am going to walk the dog, I am not going to walk the cat, I'm going to walk the dog. If I say that I have a bill to pay, that means I have a bill to pay. If I say that I am going out with a friend, that means I am going out with a friend. All of my yeses have been yes, and all of my noes have been no. There is no room for wrongful interpretation. Can we all make the world a little easier by just meaning what we say?