Things We’re Too Ashamed To Talk About

Hey guys, I'm Adam from Ms. Pixel and welcome back. I thought a lot about whether or not I really want to share with you what I want to share with you today and the reason is, for the sake of everyone, I try to be. as honest as I can about my life and my experiences within reason of course certain

things

are private in my life but when there are

things

that only impacted me personally they don't involve other people in my life when they are personal I always try to evaluate if the end justifies the means if by sharing this if it is something personal something that I might feel a little vulnerable about it is going to bring value encouragement consolation empowerment inspiration it will bring some kind of quality to your In life, if I tell you some of my insecurities or some of the difficulties that I've faced, if that can help you come to terms and help you overcome your own and give you a sense of community with someone else, then that's the indicator that I usually play when I decide what to do.

I want to share with you and this one is right along those lines. It's one I haven't shared because it's embarrassing. It's one I haven't shared because of who I am. as a teacher, as someone who shares a lot of tips and advice online and I really thought a lot and really thought deeply about whether this brings value or not and I think it really does, in fact, I think the fact that this is so personal and the fact that this is something I'm

ashamed

of or at least I was, I'm not

ashamed

of it anymore, but I grew up with a lot of shame associated with it, I realize that's probably why I need to share it.

It's because having been a teacher for quite some time, having

talk

ed to enough people, and also having developed over the years a very, very strong stance on education as an educator, I would say that more people have been in my position, but because it's something that society tends to have a stigma against... people keep it to themselves, it's usually the things we're most ashamed of, the things we're afraid of being judged, the that we keep to ourselves and it's those things that we keep to ourselves that tend to fester within us and corrode our self-esteem corrode our sense of worth as a person as an educator as an artist as a professional so that's what I'm going to do because I'm in a unique situation. privileged position with my channel with you listening to me that if I can open this vault then I could give you permission to be vulnerable and I could give you permission to find a way to help yourself and not feel like you are just cite a lost cause so that whole process sets the stage for my education, what my education was like growing up and remember I just want to make this clear, you are listening to someone who is a very passionate educator, someone who loves. teaching this is my greatest passion in life I teach even when I shouldn't teach even when no one wants me to teach them it's something innate in me raising a wrong word to use it's bread in me it's in my DNA so I take teaching I take the education very seriously, in fact, I would say that I take education particularly seriously because of my past, so what was my past like?

Well, in the early stages of primary school, when I was very young, life was pretty easy. My education went very well at school. english french math i got great grades and everything i was very athletic i also played soccer and hockey all the time so to all of you soccer moms and hockey moms and soccer dads and hockey dads who get up every day and bring your children to practice when they have to go to school and you are exhausted, I take my hat off because I know it is not an easy task, it is a huge investment of time, well, I played two sports simultaneously, so I can only imagine how much my single mother. work hard to get me to these things, but luckily I got tired of sports because there was a certain point where sports became aggressive and competitive and I didn't identify with athletes of that level, for me it was something that I wanted to do is fun, it wasn't something I wanted to do like this hyper alpha competitive sport, so the art quickly took over and there was a point in my, it was a really important turning point in my education at a very young age in elementary school.

I imagine probably around eight or nine years old, like I'm thinking between my son and my youngest son and my daughter, my youngest daughter's age, which is roughly around the eight to nine year old stage, where there was a very big turning point. and that turning point was winning an art contest and winning that art contest was an academic book art contest. The reason this is a very important discovery about me was because it was at the point where I stopped playing sports. My weight skyrocketed very quickly, I became quite chubby as a child because I ate like an athlete, but I no longer performed like an athlete and my popularity plummeted because I was the fit, sporty kid and I became the unfit kid. and so on.

To top it all off, I started to get really bored with school, schooling, I started to feel very formulaic, very cold and very forced, and I didn't really feel any emotional incentive to learn, I mean, I did and as my teachers would say, all the time. time for my mother you know he has a lot of potential he's a smart kid if he just applies himself well so I heard a lot of that because of that unpopularity when they did the school art contest for the books and it was an anonymous vote I firmly believe it was because it was an anonymous vote on the artwork that I won because the votes were from my classmates, if they had known it was mine they probably wouldn't have voted because it wasn't very popular at the time so since it was anonymous I won and that made me realize that I have some potential there as an artist artistically.

I remember it was a moment where I realized that, oh my God, maybe there's something in me. maybe maybe I have some kind of disability there and it was around that same time, if my memory serves me right, that I remember one day again in elementary school, there was a guidance counselor or a specialist or something like that that had me They took me out of class and sat me in a room in some other classroom in some other empty classroom at a desk and made me do this visual test. I don't know why they decided to do it in the first place, maybe it was because of my artwork, I don't know, but I clearly remember sitting in this classroom and they gave me these different tests to do like, you know, those stain tests. of ink and there was another one that was these half blue and half white plastic tiles. in this kind of plastic folding case that I had to rearrange in certain orders to match certain patterns and all these visual tests and things like that, it's a bit of a strange experience for a child who doesn't know what's going on and why they're doing this, why am I being forced to do this?

But I remember when I got home, my mom had told me that she had apparently ranked my college-level visual skills at third grade or something, which was a nice, much-needed ego boost because otherwise, I didn't feel very good with myself and I felt beautiful. I felt quite disappointing when a student was treated like someone who didn't apply themselves well enough to give me any hope about myself at the time, so it goes without saying. I just adopted this identity as an artist at that very early stage of my life and I continued to draw and I continued to identify publicly as, quote, an artist, Adam, the artist who was always art, was always something that was closely associated with me and, furthermore, this was reinforced by the fact that I had a mother who was also an artist, although at that point in my life I had temporarily abandoned art so that she could obtain a degree in computer science and obtain a well-paying job herself so that she could raise a family of children on their own, but she was still an artist, I still had art everywhere, I still communicated with an artist, etc., etc. and then came high school and when secondary education came. at least the educational side didn't get easier, I would say it got a lot harder.

You know I was too distracted with social things and friends, fitting in and culture, cultural things and staying out of fights. high schools were pretty tough because the high schools I was in were pretty tough at the time and dating, you know, I was obsessed with girls and all that kind of stuff, and yeah, I wasn't completely interested in school, He was not interested in education and I for myself. The teachers and the education system felt sterile, they felt clinical, they felt industrial. I really had this. I could almost describe my attitude towards educators in the education system as political, cold, uninspired and forced and it was like a prison.

Add to that the fact that the schools I attended were pretty tough, so, well, I'll get right to the point. I didn't go to a high school. I didn't go to two. I ended up going to five high schools all together, so to give you a little bit of a background of my educational path as far as that goes, I started at a high school that my sister, my older sister, Angie, had gone to and in At that time it was a very popular school. which a lot of kids from all over Canada would go to, but the year I went it was grotesquely overcrowded and the original principal who did such a good job running the school had retired and was replaced by these two apparent morons, I don't know.

I was too young to remember it at the time. I wasn't involved in that, but I remember I went to that school and they stole one of my best friends, uh, one of my friends, who was a very little girl. A little girl was kicked. someone who decided to attack her broke my locker there were fights every day outside of school it was real chaos and I only lasted in that school most people only lasted in that school maybe a month um and the dropout rate in that clot in that school it was in percentages per day and it was not by the end of that year that the school had practically closed its doors, so yes, it went from a pi, I think it was a population of I don't know seven or eight thousand to around 800 by the end of the year almost everyone had left so they all migrated to this second high school they had gone to which was fine at first but then again that overcrowding problem arose and for me when you have a school overcrowded, um, and there's a lot of things you know you have bad eggs at school, a lot of fighting, a lot of theft, a lot of all kinds of crap, so I put up with the rest. of that year and I didn't want to stay any longer so you can see that when I got to secondary three um or the third year of secondary school I don't know if in other countries it is called second three but by the time I got to section 3.

I had a quite jaded attitude towards high school, so I got into section 3 and ended up going to this third school, but when I got to this third school I didn't give a damn anymore. At the time I didn't give a shit about the education I had and I remember skipping most of that year just to show that my school average at the end of that year was 12 out of 100, so I just didn't go. I think I was maybe between 10 and 12 of that school year. I just didn't bother going. I was going to shopping malls. I was going out with friends.

I was going out with my girlfriend. I was doing anything but going to school, I basically didn't show up, so needless to say the next year they sent me to an alternative school, but ironically they did a placement test at the beginning of that school year at this alternative school and I passed, so basically I was able to Let's say I got a free year because I never bothered to apply, but they passed me on anyway. I loved this alternative school and at this alternative school it was called options. I don't know if it still exists, it was a very different dynamic and I really, really remember.

I loved the experience of going to school, it was um, it was small, it was like an office building above this gym that I ended up working out in about a decade later, ironically, it was an office. It was some kind of building and was separated into three separate rooms with three separate teachers, all of whom were magical human beings. I back this up and they were small classrooms, maybe a maximum of 10 to 12 of us in each class, so it was a very, very tight space. knitting group and I felt very connected to the teachers they were just passionate they were cliff was one of the teachers and then I remember the teacher who really impacted me the most was patrice a very flamboyant man and he was very animated and very passionate and very emotional he became very emotionally involved in his students you felt that he gave a you felt that he cared you felt that um you made a mistake if you missed school you hurt him you hurt his feelings personally you didn't understand him a black mark you didn't get a uh you didn't get a reprimand you didn't receive a you didn't receive a you know some punishment or some suspension you broke his heart and that's why you felt very responsible with a level human beingabout how you behaved and I did extremely, I was present for most of that school year, but being at the alternative school they had very, very strict policies about skipping school and breaking the rules and I had skipped twice and received my last warning and Towards the end of the year I was maybe three-quarters of the year where I skipped a third class and rules or rules, buddy, you have to go, so I got kicked out of the alternative school and that was the first time I I really cared.

Because I had been kicked in every other school that was expelled from honestly a god, I was like I never really went in the first place, I had no reason to go, but I learned something at this school, I learned that I think. that one of the most important things that resonated with me was that my humanity was recognized in this school that I was in and as I'm describing this to you right now recording this, I'm literally reciting what I would write in my journal I'm making discoveries as I As I'm

talk

ing to you right now I realize just as I'm telling you this that I feel like my humanity was recognized in that alternative school by that teacher specifically by Patrice if you're listening, Patrice.

I don't know if you ever would. I would love you to pieces. What a beautiful boy, and uh, yeah, but they had to let me go, so luckily I ended up getting accepted to another high school in the end. That year I managed to pass and I finished my school year there and I made some very dear friends, some of my best friends to this day and I finished my fourth grade and then I finished my last year of high school. second five in this final school um and um I did well, I did well, I got through it, you know, I didn't make any mistakes or anything like that and, yeah, it was okay, I mean, I didn't get good grades or anything like that. that, but I passed, I got my high school diploma and I went on to college and university, where when you get once you get to the college level, um, ironically, a lot of people at that point is usually when people usually start to slack off, there That's when people start dropping out, it's because you know they've already had to go through high school and all that, and I think I've satisfied my need to party, go out, date and all that up until that point. . period and it was the first time in my life that I was actually surrounded by kindred spirits that shared the same passion as me and things like that and my college and university education followed that said I didn't finish my college degree, no I didn't actually finish my bachelor's degree. , I did two of the three years and it wasn't because of lack of effort or lack of interest or because I hated my teachers or any nonsense, it wasn't because I valued education as much as I did. getting a professional education wasn't specifically the type of education I was looking for, it was that decision to not finish my third year and finish my bachelor's degree, which is also something that could be a precursor to another talk about the future. education and diplomas in general, although I think I've talked about that in the past, it was very Canadian film focused animation because I was an animation major at the time and I was very commercial, I was a Disney guy, I just talked about that in the last review of my book, I mean, if you followed me for a while, you know that it was very commercial, very classic, Disney-style animation and this was not like that.

They didn't have that like in Canada like in the Concordia. In college where I studied animation, you know, painting on glass and it was rotoscoping and you know, stop motion and a lot of experimental things. You have European influence, uh, no, no, European animation. European animation is probably one of the best. the planet, but a very alternative style of animation that just didn't appeal to me at all and around that second year I had already been hired at a studio as a key 2D animator, which specifically exploited my passion and gave me direct professional experience. and the kind of things I was doing, so it was a professional decision at the time to say that I think I'm betting that I'm benefiting more and getting paid to continue working instead of finishing my third year and getting my bachelor's degree because no one he was asking me for a bachelor's degree, already at that time I could see that the diploma itself was the only real benefit of staying and it was simply not worth it and to this day, after 45 years, you know it and work professionally.

Over the last 20 years as an artist animator director, I still maintain all sorts of things, so all this to say at this point, you can see that my educational background was, from a statistical perspective, rubbish, I didn't do it right. my whole experience in elementary and high school was that I was pretty much a lackey, I dropped out of school, I was nobody, okay and I and I went to five high schools and, whether for reasons to avoid getting my ass kicked butt or, um, uh, lack of interest, I was a very good example of a young man with no academic achievements, I was a disaster, but how the hell did I go from there to being a very, very passionate teacher?

Well let's fast forward in my career now I'm working as an artist I'm working as a professional finding a job is complicated it was difficult I was a kid with two with an education in animation 2d fine arts where the world was going 3d yada yada have you heard that in art past I talked before in the past but it was a little bit difficult but I was still finding work and where I was finding work when everything worked out it went very well and I was slowly but surely building a name for myself but it was a difficult road.

The path was a lot of redefining and re-education and a lot of following trends and I realized that my real education began at work because as I worked with those new technologies, new techniques and new things, I had to constantly learn. and you know, applying to all these different studies and branching out and stuff like that and one day, maybe six seven years after I finished, I know it was ten years because now, at this point, I've already finished my college and university education and now I'm working as a professional, I don't know how many years I've been working as a professional like I was and I was, I lived in this neighborhood, I had moved to a certain neighborhood with my with my ex-girlfriend um and I were on our way to the grocery store in an old and boring old boring neighborhood going to the grocery store to buy anything I don't know and I went through this because in my neighborhood it was kind of It looked like it kind of looked like a high school but I never really saw the students coming in or out thence.

I wasn't sure what kind of school it was. Until I sat outside the school gates, I just sat. I was close. to school I don't think there were students there, nothing like that and I sat on one of the ledges that had these big concrete ledges by the entrance to smoke a cigarette when I smoked back then and I stopped to smoke. and a man comes out and stops and turns in a very extravagant way and says Adam and I said Patrice, my old alternative school teacher and he looked at me, says Adam and walks up to me and grabs my face like he's going to give me a kiss and told me how are you? and I said I'm wonderful, thank you for asking how you've been and he asked me what are you doing with your life right now and I said um, I'm working right now. as a professional artist he saw us in an animation studio and his eyes filled with tears, oh I can't even, I can't even talk about this guy without getting emotional just thinking about him, what a guy, he started crying while I.

I'm starting to cry right now and uh and he said I'm so happy I'm so happy for you He says Adam I was so worried about you You were such a smart boy You were so full of passion But I was so worried when you when we had to let you go school because I didn't know where you were going to go and I thought, oh my God, this kid has a spark inside him, I hope it doesn't fade away and he said yes. I have no idea how happy I am to know that you didn't end up just I don't know doing whatever you actually did something with your brain, you did something with your life and uh yeah, and it reminded me of two that were a very important moment in my life because it made me realize how my life had come full circle and little did I know that that small moment in my life was a precursor to what it would end up being a decade and a half later.

I know, I'm sorry, give me a second, so fast forward, my career continues. I never saw Patrice since then. Hopefully one day I can meet that beautiful man again, but who knows, yes, so fast forward, my career is slowly growing. new opportunities fortunately I find myself at this crossroads between 2d and 3d that opens my opportunity to work as a director and I work for a director in one of the best jobs I have ever had working for Benoit Touchette one of the best directors I have ever known. I've talked in the past and then I started working at companies like ea and I worked for Disney on Disney shows and, you know, I ended up within that period starting my YouTube channel and it slowly grew, it was a very, very slow growth. , particularly during the first part of my YouTube channel and then in 2015, after my last full-time job which was working on a Disney show as a supervisor.

No, it wasn't my last job. My last job was the one I had. I worked on the Disney program and then I got a job as a teacher and as I mentioned in previous talks, I went to the ub campus because I wanted to educate myself more to improve my employability and when and when the administrator saw my work and said: have you ever Have you considered teaching Adam because you are very good at drawing? I was like yeah, yeah, I never had a mother who was a teacher and a father who was a teacher, but I never considered teaching myself and she said well, I'd like to put you in touch with this university with this Egypt of old Montreal and I went e I did an interview and they asked me to explain certain principles of animation and things like that to see my knowledge of animation and art and they hired me and I didn't know that this simple gesture of being hired as a teacher made me realize that I had been a teacher all my life. life because when I walked into that class and I walked into the staff room and I started teaching I felt like I had been doing it all my life I felt a sense of belonging that I never felt I had had in my entire life there was no greater joy in my life than sharing everything I do because despite my career I realized that both the success that I was and the complete failure were all those aspects of my life and my personality, all the ups and downs that I had gone through throughout of all appointments. potentials the potential that I had that I had wasted with laziness and my desire to socialize and date and my successes and failures as an artist as a professional everything mattered that I could use every part as Brad Bird would say in Pixar when we were working on the movie Incredibles using every part of the buffalo.

I was able to use every part of the buffalo as a tool to improve other people's lives and I think because I grew up with this particular feeling of being on the short end of the stick as a student it made me particularly empathetic to other people who I saw who were exceptionally talented. beautiful and exceptionally beautiful personalities and being able to look at them and say "hey", don't listen to what the institution tells you, pay attention to what I'm telling you and I'm telling you, this is what I can see. I think the fact that I struggled for so long to find my own value made me very good at finding value in other people.

I know what it feels like to lose yourself. and I know what it feels like to find it again and I know where to look for it and I know what it feels like to be able to look deeply beyond the superficial mark on a person's report card and see the true quality in a human being and also see how that uniqueness in your personality can lend itself to exceptionally valuable skills as a professional. I love that superpower of mine that I have adopted by being so outstanding my whole life and that brings me to this day. until today where I started lucid pixel in 2015 and that school is not just a manifestation on my youtube channel and the art talks that I share with you are not just a manifestation of someone who simply feels like sharing interesting tips with people online on my youtube. channel and my school is a manifestation of my desire to redefine humanity's feelings of self-worth to reunite people with their sense of humanity that if you are sitting in your study at home if you are if you are if your education was nothing more than a complete show from day one, understand that that is only according to the institution, according to an already limited focus by a limited institution that, in my opinion, has gone so far to industrialize human value and human value that can qualify.

Based on a linear system, they can rate human value and take everything that is the uniquely talented person that you are and they guarantee that you have gifts and they guarantee that you have uniqueness, but nine out of ten chances that you won't see it because they only tell you. I have been measuring yourself based on these statistics and this institution's measurement tool. This doesn't mean that schools suck. This is not to say that educators suck. In fact, I would say the teachers I have worked with.The teachers I have worked with are by far the best human beings I have ever met.

They are all deeply passionate and deeply committed people who very often work for absolute wages and yet continue to do so every day, but there is a type of people who stay up every day and teach people, but that does not It means that they are not so aware of the bureaucracy and superficiality that an educational quotation system can force teachers to teach and they work within those limits all the time, so this is not a knock on teachers this is an insult institutional this is a rebuke to the system and depending on the country you live in, if you live in the United States or if you live in Canada or if you are living in Sweden or if you are living in Portugal or wherever you are living your system your your the system under which you're learning can be fantastic and it can be complete rubbish and when you hear me talk and when you hear me share these stories and you hear my philosophy about teaching and art and all that, all those different types of things, if that's what that you always wanted to hear, it is probably a reflection of everything you value in yourself but you struggle to find an adequate educational system to fulfill it this is where I put the focus on all of you who are listening to me right now I want you to listen very carefully if you have passed some period of your life feeling lost potential sense of mistake feeling like you had your priorities in the wrong place feeling like you lacked focus lacked ambition or maybe just feeling completely stupid you just felt dumb you didn't feel as smart or as capable as the others I want you to know something that you are not guilty of doing anything except one thing and that is being a human being, you are just a normal human being and if at any point in your life you went off the rails, you got distracted, maybe chasing some pretty girl was more important than you, then it is more important to you than doing what was expected of you, yes, maybe you wasted an opportunity because you focused in the wrong place, but that doesn't mean anything. defining yourself as a person does not find you as an artist it does not define you as a human it does not throw you into a category of lower quality human beings and at no point in your life are you not able to achieve your full potential this and do not take it as a professional abandonment uh um video here I'm not promoting dropping out of school I'm not promoting being someone like fuck up the institution you know steve jobs dropped out of school so all of this that should make it okay for everyone no that's not where I'm going here I want to take a moment to stop and look at yourself, look at yourself and realize that if someone outside of you or more likely yourself is throwing negative judgment at you for something that is not harmful to others if you are being judged negatively by a spouse you are being judged negatively by a girlfriend or boyfriend you are being judged negatively by a school you are being judged negatively by a parent and you have legitimately done nothing to hurt anyone else, don't let that define you because if A lost cause like me was able to get out of that sandstorm and make something of himself, so you can too.

I want to channel Patrice through me today. And if you could see me, I'd like to grab your face, look deep into your eyes, and tell you how beautiful you are, regardless of all your screw-ups, regardless of all the times you've been a lost cause, regardless of every time. you felt stupid or worthless or any of those things because you're not stupid at all and rest assured you have so much potential, you have as much quality today as ever and you will never waste it as long as you don't waste it You're okay with that being said, I really love you all With all my heart and happy painting, take care.