Post-secondary or grade school.
The racism, discrimination, and segregation. As a Native American in a white school, it was frequently traumatic. Frequently assaulted and threatened by teachers and the principal to cut my long hair. Then had to sit in class to learn about how all those things I was actively experiencing were in America’s past was bullshit. <30 years ago.
Not getting to have “schooling”. I was “homeschooled”, in that my parents kept all 8 of us kids at home and didn’t bother to provide much in the way of education beyond reading and basic math. The lack of real education I was able to overcome, but the gross lack of any socialization has left me struggling with poor social competency to this day.
The pledge of allegiance in US schools
Having undiagnosed autism and parents not believing in it. I fucking hated school
I was diagnosed a few months after school ended. Same year as well. Parent still refused to believe it.
I was diagnosed a decade after I graduated and was married. My wife suggested for me to go since she saw the signs.
Sounds like you have a caring wife, I’m happy to read this.
Yes indeed : 3
I got diagnosed at age 30. Literally nobody (except for the other autistics I know) believes it.
I grew up in a time when autism was diagnosable, but only if you were in the extreme end of the spectrum. I don’t even know if Asperger’s was a thing.
Many, many days of my adult life I’ve wondered if I’m on the (lighter) end of the spectrum. There’s still at least a two year waiting period to find out. So many “clues” I can point to from my childhood, but they could also just be coincidences.
It was diagnosable… But my parents didn’t bother to get me diagnosed… my brother is 100x worse than me and they still deny it.
Getting out of bed.
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.
Waking up early. Also the harest part of my work - trying to complete complex work while I can barely stay awake.
All the fucking assholes
Adhd didn’t exist back then.
Lucky you
School just sucked. I was popular in school but still hated it and everyone knew I hated it. Every teacher said how college was different and shit. Well I dropped out of two colleges and joining a trade union was the best thing I’ve ever done.
Was bullied constantly by other people in high school. Caused a lot of trauma I’m still trying to solve…
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.
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.
Hey there, kid who was diagnosed back in 1993 here…
Depending on when you were in school might not have helped at least being diagnosed. Accommodations were basically non-existent for all of my schooling career and meds, while situationally useful, were diminishing returns. The system just wasn’t designed for us in mind and from what I have seen from my friends kids current accommodation is at times lackluster and spottily applied.
Schooling is kind of designed for adults to teach rather than kids to effectively learn since even neurotypical kids have cycling attention spans that aren’t all synced up. So while it sucks we didn’t get good help you also may not have missed out as much as you would think.
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.
deleted by creator
Grade 12. Absolute waste of time. Like… “I taught myself HTML/JS/CSS, instead of listening” levels of a waste of time.
I hated school as a kid and went back as an adult. The experience is a whole other level and actually really nice.
