Ask Lemmy

The hardest part for me was the way the criteria for success changed between high school and college.

I aced high school because high school requires one to be smart. But I barely scraped by in college because college requires self-organization and discipline.

Nobody really sat me down and raised the flag on how bad my habits were, before college. The message I always got was about how “gifted” I was and how the world would be my oyster because I’m so smart.

The only person really striving to teach me discipline in high school was my track and cross country coach. For that I’m eternally grateful, because it could have been a lot worse.

But most of my adult life has been spent struggling to develop consistent output, struggling to keep promises, struggling to show up consistently.

Don’t know if that’s gotten better since I was a kid, but if I could change one thing it would be to do a lot more to train kids to fit into a structure where others are relying on them to deliver things on time. To keep working when things get hard, and not to rest too heavily on being “smart” as a plan for future success.

Smart is like 1% of success. The rest is conscientiousness.

Adhd didn't exist back then.

Everything felt like they didn't last nearly as long as they could've. You were shuffled a lot during a school day and you had so much crammed in to do within those 8 hours that you're there.

I never liked school for the courses and all that. I liked school because of who I hung around and some of the memories I got through them.

Grade 12. Absolute waste of time. Like... "I taught myself HTML/JS/CSS, instead of listening" levels of a waste of time.

Getting out of bed.

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.

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.

The pledge of allegiance in US schools

Having undiagnosed autism and parents not believing in it. I fucking hated school

Waking up early. Also the harest part of my work - trying to complete complex work while I can barely stay awake.

Art and music class in middle school. Literally useless. Fortunately, we no longer do such useless classes in high school. I pretty much lived my life through middle school without friends, so I hated the art class even more because we sometimes got grouped together to make some "art".

Putting the work in.

I hated school as a kid and went back as an adult. The experience is a whole other level and actually really nice.

Any writing. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling were always easy, but I never knew what to write.

Also, I often skipped homework and believe that I was right to do so. Even though I've been out of school since 2008 and have no children, I still maintain that the school has zero right to assign anything to be done outside of school.

Literature Review. God, scientific papers are so bloody dull to read.

Was bullied constantly by other people in high school. Caused a lot of trauma I'm still trying to solve...

the fucking grift of it all.

tpaying a $60 license fee to pearson just to be able to submit fucking required homework.

Sitting still and I wasn’t the only one, I didn’t have ADHD or anything, I was a boy who was in a class with a bunch of his friends and was told to sit still and quiet for 8 hours a day and if we were lucky we got a 20 minute recess but now of that was lining up and walking outside and back inside. Also, from the Midwest so odds are it was cancelled and we had to stay inside and read because it was too hot, too cold, too rainy, or too tornadoey outside.

I still get into arguments with my mom to this day about this. She told me I was “always getting in trouble” but it was because I was bored out of my mind and having to sit still all day. Me and most young boys are out into a lose/lose situation with modern schooling.

All the fucking assholes

Homework, I always did fine in class and on tests but as soon as I stepped off campus I wouldn't usually get home until dark and half the time I'd leave my backpack in the gym locker so id fail because of the homework assignments. I even remember a teacher calling me out because I was the only one who passed a test but I'm failing the class to make the rest of the kids feel bad.

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.

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.

Hardest class - teacher straight up lied to us and failed 80% of the class on a test. Did it again next test. Didn't give the slightest shit about any of us Dr Richard lastname, you were truly a Dick. It's been 20 years and I still hate you.

Hardest thing - finding a job. School did not teach me how to actually find a job. Just told to network. What does that mean? It means network. Fucking hated them.