Post-secondary or grade school.
How dumb it all is. Seriously. The highly regimented structure of curricula and examination is a shitty way to learn. It’s optimised for making teaching and grading easier. And also teaching young people to be obedient facile production line workers.
But intellectually and academically, it always seemed obviously bad and boring to me. And I’ve since gotten to understand a number of academic topics relatively well to know how true this is. Proper understanding, intellectually, and skill in application, are things that are far more organic and purpose driven than the shitty curricula that pencil pushing educators spit out as though the human mind were an excel spread sheet.
Grade school, just how slow and boring it was. Waiting, nothing to do.
High school - bullies, the stupid rules, and also trying to write essays in the days before the Internet.
College - juggling parenting, earning money, and school. Also finally getting classes I had to work at to pass.
Gym class. Why that exists in class format absolutely stumps me.
At the start of my freshman year, they hadn’t finished building the “new” gym, which was to be used for the gym classes, so the cheerleaders could practice in the old, big gym.
So the cheerleaders practice on one side of the old gym, and a bunch of horny teen idiots on the other. Dear God the shit they would say, unapologetic and just the worst; “i can see your pu$$y! Bitch just did the splits and left a hickey on the floor!”
Beyond “Hur dur”, this was straight up verbal assault. A few days after the worst of these comments, we were told to go to a portable classroom where we learned health crap out of a book, then i went up four flights of stairs to the actual health class.
No idea where the hell i was going with that, other than it seemed to be a way to tire us out, until the comments landed us in class, then it seemed just a way to keep us occupied until the gym teacher could follow her true, Lesbian Passion ®, girls volleyball coach.
That would happen to me just by waiting for the bus.
I thought so too, until i got to know someone who never had any decent physical education. It’s scary to see the lack of coordination and balance some adults can have.
Was it because of the lack of coordination or was that because of the lack of physical education? I know people like me who had that but never got anything out of it.
Not being able to take a “mental health” day off, in both high school and college. In high school my parents wouldn’t let me (though I don’t fault them for that), and in college it was hard to keep up if I even missed one lecture. As an adult with a job , if I need a day to decompress, I can decide to take off tomorrow and nobody can tell me no. In school it was hard to keep on going with the tank on empty.
I flunked out of nursing school despite the content itself being fairly easy because I didn’t know how to deal with mean girl shit yet. I passed the second time by just doing whatever they told me to until I graduated. In particular, I remembered some advice from years earlier from an older roommate who had just gotten back from their coast guard training. They said their goal had been to go as long as possible before the instructor even knew their name. Honestly that’s been a pretty great strategy for me when I’ve needed to escape abuses of power ever since; keep your head down, do whatever they tell you to, don’t draw attention to yourself, then book it the first chance you get.
In nursing school right now. Pleased to say I’m having the opposite experience - I’m the guy that’s always asking questions, running study groups, and debating the prof after tests to try to get questions thrown out and boost everyone’s grade. So… pretty much everyone in the program, student and staff, knew my name and face from day 1… and I’ve had an awesome relationship so far with all of them.
It’s been difficult, but very gratifying and at times even fun.
Your instructors were shit.
No, they were nice like that to the male students. I was female presenting at the time so it was just a fucking tank of piranhas. The sexism for the men doesn’t really seem to start until you’re working ortho, psych, or ER and everybody starts looking at you like you’re a damn hoyer that transforms into a battle mech optimus prime style.
Two people in my immediate family tried nursing school. One basically finished it, then didn’t want to take the cert exam. The other one has dropped out twice. I’ve heard the stories of how brutal it can be.
Foreign languages. Never got a handle on it.
Now, with Google Translate and AI I don’t have to!
Math. I sucked at math since 3rd grade and that shit was a struggle all the way through college. I’m lucky i can even count, I swear to God. Had to pass THREE remedial math courses just to be allowed to take the course that counted for actual credit towards my degree. Lately I’ve been contemplating going back to college for a second degree, but I realized I’d have to take shit like pre-calculus for the degrees I’m looking at and I just don’t think I could do it. My brain is such a letdown.
Right there with you. Suffered with fractions in 4th grade, did okay from there until trig in high school (sophomore year?), then failed hard in calc 1 over the course of 5 undergrad tries. Finally got it, but damn, my brain could not handle the theoretical stuff. Maybe methods have changed in 20+ years, but that shit sits with you.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but in hindsight, not getting diagnosed with ADHD was the hardest part for me. I guess at the time, there were still a lot of misconceptions about it, so my parents and teachers never recognized it for what it was. Because I was placed in a “gifted and talented” program when I was young, my slipping grades were just attributed to laziness instead of a disorder. That spiraled into many other problems in school; failing classes, getting into trouble, and several lifelong anxieties that still follow me many years later.
Honestly, my whole life would probably have gone in a much different direction if I had actually gotten the help I needed as a kid. I don’t blame anybody for not recognizing it, but it does suck having slipped through the cracks like that.
Your story sounds exactly like mine.
Yeah, I think a lot of us that grew up in the 90s/00s went through a very similar experience. Kids who excelled early were assumed to be advanced, but a lot of times that “advancement” doesn’t stick. And it’s compounded by the fact that those of us who went through this never really learned how to study; we were able to pick up on concepts very easily early on, so we never learned how to actually take notes or read material in a way that reinforced knowledge retention. We were able to get by with “skipping” the actual learning part.
So when we reached the grade level where we can no longer just effectively “wing it”, we’re trapped because we don’t know how to properly study, and teachers won’t teach you how because you “should have” already figured that out several grades ago, and if you passed those classes already then surely it’s because you knew how to study all along and are just getting lazy with it now, right?
This video by Dr K articulates this concept a lot better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E
I strongly recommend watching this if any of you were considered a “gifted” student. He touches on a lot of things that were very eye-opening and felt eerily similar to my own experience, so I feel like the things he talks about here probably apply to many of us.
That was really good! I saw how long it was and thought, I’ll give it a few minutes, but I sat through the whole thing.
I could definitely relate to a lot of what he said. And I’m going to steal his quote and make it my new mantra: “Dark Souls doesn’t care! (if your parents call the principal)”
I saw how long it was and thought, I’ll give it a few minutes, but I sat through the whole thing.
A lot of Dr K’s videos have this effect on me! He does a fantastic job of explaining things in a way that anyone can understand. He goes really deep into the psychology and neuroscience of everything, so I always come away from his videos feeling like I’ve actually learned something.
No, no. Blame them. It’s ok to realize that it’s not your fault. As children, we’re placed in the safe and lovkng hands of those that raise us.
And when those hands are not only unsafe, but also incompetent, it’s perfectly natural to feel cheated at life.knowing that YOU are not the problem. Society picking those people to raise you is the problem.
It’s the reason I don’t have kids. I don’t feel like I’d raise kids the right way. I don’t want to ruin my kids life.
Indeed. It got worse as a got older and the rails were peeled away, peaking post college. It got easier as my wife and I divided tasks based on strengths. Got diagnosed 2 years ago when she mentioned she thought I might have adhd, brought on by my distractability around our toddler. It really makes the rest of my life understandable
How was the process of getting diagnosed for you? I tried seeking a diagnosis a while back, but was told that it would be difficult to do without any kind of prior assessments from childhood. With mental health being so poorly covered by insurance, I’ve been hesitant to go through a lengthy evaluation process.
It went fine? It involved filling out several forms including by parents or someone that knew me during childhood and I think a current one too which could be my wife. It was 3 sessions, an intro, the actual testing, and then going over the results. It was all remote for me. I believe I had to bring this up with my pcp first to get an order for testing. I got diagnosed at behavioral health clinic. Insurance covered it mostly, but my wife’s insurance is pretty good because she works for an Amazon subsidiary, so ymmv.
Now therapy and medication on the other side has been harder for me. First therapist didn’t seem to know anything about adhd (I went with a new place since the diagnosers didn’t have prescribing ability). I’ve been since then looking for something else but have been having trouble finding a place that prescribes/accepts my insurance/I just lose focus and stop looking for a few months, gee. I found two a few months ago, but one said prescribing appointments are a year out and the other said a provider would contact me but I don’t think had yet, and yeah since then I have not made an effort to contact, I really should
Sorry for the rambling and inexact details, memory issues 😜
Edit: I think the testing session was 2 hours? Also it was interesting to see some memory games during testing that I thought I was good at, and as it progressed I just completely disintegrated in my ability to do it
Personally, I really liked school. Even high school. It would have been easier if I’d had more mental health resources, but I learned a ton and had a lot of freedom in terms of electives. I was taking college-level history courses as a senior in high school and absolutely ate it up.
The only nuisance was that I am a good singer and my parents forced me to skip a writing course and advanced biology my senior year because someone the chamber choir had selected instead of me decided to quit, and I wasn’t assertive enough at the time to tell my parents no when the choir director called my mom and convinced her to make me do it, so my last semester I performed with the chamber choir and absolutely fucking hated every second of it. (Though I did put my foot down on weekend travel competitions, so at least I didn’t have to give up weekends for that shit.)
My only other regret is of the time-travel variety. A former schoolmate was high up in the RNC when Trump was elected, and I wish I could go back in time and intervene somehow.
The damn 6 miles daily walk. From grade 4 until 12. Not in the USA, BTW. A shithole 3rd world country.
Going without motivation.
I graduated college the first time with straight C’s and major that didn’t have much headroom. It was a struggle and I was a terrible student. Always late, always bargaining with professors for extra time, always “faking it”. I couldn’t find work fitting a degree, went on to do landscaping work, field surveying work, security, all minimum wage.
Then I got into firefighting, then wildland firefighting, then saw how computer science and geospatial data played in, and the motivation clicked.
I saved my money from a pair of very very busy fire seasons (lots of OT and hazard pay), Went back to school for CS and GIS with straight A’s, found the whole experience easy and enjoyable. (Not that I wasn’t challenged and had late nights). If you’ve dug ditches for money and don’t want to do that any more, the asks and challenges of college are comparatively trivial. Even in upper division classes the teachers are crystal clear about the expectations, the schedule, the tests, all of it. If you approach classwork like a job, it all falls into place in ways it never did when I had competing interests and really just wanted to fuck off, drink beer, and go skiing.
Everyone else wants to go do whatever during office hours ? Nah Im there. Every time. Etc etc
Motivation made all the difference, even when content was hard for me (linear algebra after 5 years of no academic math? Fuuuck that was some late nights for my dumb ass. )
If you don’t know what you most enjoy after H.S., finding your motivation is a really great idea for many kids. if you give it a quarter and still aren’t inspired, outside work could help with that. College is expensive; but it’s worth it and -much- easier once you know why you’re there! You’re story is a perfect example, thanks for sharing.
I’d add this (from my experience): if you start out doing well, but your grades start slipping in the second year? Take a quarter (or a year) off to figure out why that’s happening. Maybe that major isn’t for you after all. Maybe things in your personal life need getting past so that you can can get your focus back. The college will still be there when you’re ready … unless what you need is … another college !!
Yep. No point worrying about redoing life. It happened, everything is ok.
I wish I had going the fire crew right after highschool, did that for several years, then started taking a few classes at a time between seasons.
Then dive into a full degree
Depression.
Well right now it’s that my prof speaks excruciatingly slow and makes sure to read the entirety of each slide of the PowerPoint.
This class is already boring. He doesn’t need to make it worse.
I’m usually just trying to stay awake.All the fucking assholes
I didn’t struggle academically in grade school at all, with the exception of mathematics. And by that, I just mean that I had to put in a moderate amount of effort to learn it.
But when I started college/university in a new city, I was alone, wholly unprepared, and paralyzed by severe (and untreated) anxiety, depression, and ADHD. I didn’t know how to make friends by myself. The thought of having to interact with my dorm mates would send me into a panic.
Not to mention, I was not only having a crisis of sexuality, but I also convinced myself that I was an ugly, gross loser whom no one would ever want to be with sexually or romantically. (Jesus.)
I took a break for a semester because I was very suicidal. I started therapy again/taking Zoloft—the latter of which saved my life—and went back for another semester. But I knew, even before going back, that it just wasn’t for me. It really didn’t help that I already knew college in the US is a scam.
So yeah, I ended up dropping out. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it, now.
