unfocused rambling: my secondary education

[egypturnash]

For the past few days, kamenkyote has been playing with a strip about The Miseries Of High School. And it's made me think about how much my particular high school miseries don't resemble what seems to be the standard narrative of high school.

First off, a bit of terminology: by "high school" I mean grades 7-12; the school I went to covered that span. Wikipedia suggests that there's a lot of variance. I dunno if I was considered to be in "junior high" when I was in the early part of that range; I never really cared.

The stuff everyone talks about when they reflect on their high school experience is alien to me. The jock/nerd dichotomy, with the former probably beating up the latter; the popularity games and the cliques... none of that really affected me. I don't know if this is because there just wasn't much of that at the magnet school I attended, or if it's because I was so withdrawn that I somehow avoided it.

Because I was pretty damn withdrawn and enclosed. My father died on my twelfth birthday, and I just completely closed up emotionally for about, ooh, twenty years or so. I'd been skipped ahead a grade somewhere in elementary school, so I think this would have been the summer before I went into eighth grade. Pretty much the entirety of those years are a grey blur of depression and self-imposed isolation. I had a tiny handful of friends, and a slightly larger set of peers: the other kids in the gifted/talented class. Elementary school had already dulled much of the love of learning by that point, and the deep depression I was in after Dad died made me pretty much uninterested in anything except escape by reading and drawing.

There's a few fragments of memories. I got pushed off the front steps of the school once by the one kid who attempted to bully me for a year. I can dig up the cavernous-seeming halls of the place if I try. I failed PE six years running due to a loophole in the rules I exploited, mostly because I really hated the way the polyester gym uniforms felt against my skin, and had little interest in exercise. Completely failed every language, too. But I don't remember any of the social games that everyone looks back on in horror; I don't remember worrying about being one of the Popular Kids, I don't even remember being aware that there were any Popular Kids. I just remember it being a long stretch of absolute boredom, with occasional headshakes from teachers and administrators who'd look at my IQ tests, or standardized test performance, and wonder why the hell I couldn't apply that in class.

I think I got sent to the vice-principal's office a lot for a while, too. Also I bit a math teacher once; I think out of utter screaming frustration when being berated for failing to cram my head full of absolutely archaic English measurements - I think we spent like half a fucking school year on exercises about converting, I dunno, pottles into greels, or something equally obscure. Seriously. (And of course this is the same kid who had boggled a college math professor who was visiting his parents when he was six or so by talking about something utterly obscure he'd picked up from a Martin Gardner collection, in a way that showed actual understanding.) Mostly, though, I just remember being bored, not really giving a damn about being on the edge of failing most of my classes, and being so far off of the social map that I couldn't see it, and it couldn't see me.

None of the fiction I'd read about the high school experience even began to mirror my experience. Except for Daniel M. Pinkwater's books.

Looking back, I feel like whatever I was supposed to learn in high school - both in terms of what the individual teachers were trying to teach about their fields, and in terms of the subtler life lessons the school system is supposed to impart about Fitting In To The Modern World - I learnt next to nothing. How much of it was the system failing a scarily bright kid (the only kind of high school experience story I ever do find some commonality with) and how much of it was me plummeting into a bottomless pit of depression, I dunno. Some of both.

Honestly, if I could go back in time and talk to myself, I'd tell him that yes, it does get better... and I'd seriously consider giving him a hit of E, as well, since I think the one time (in my entire life, so far!) I did that in the right environment really went a long way to break me out of twenty years of depressive thought.

Comments

[abirritate.livejournal.com]

Middle-Highschool was a serious pit of despair with few high moments for me as well. I also am enjoying T's bunny comic, but it upsets me in a way that's hard to put a finger on. I want to scoop the poor bunny boy out of the situation I know he'll be in soon.

DAMHIKT

[wolflahti.livejournal.com]

It is unfortunate that high intelligence seems to be in lockstep with depressive tendencies. Seems it should be the other way around.

[coyoteseven.livejournal.com]

I went to a private school run by Baptist parishioners from 1980 to 1984, from grades 4 to 8 (grades 7 and 8 were considered "Jr. High"). They were fucking nuts, trying to ram their snake oil religion down your throat every moment of every day I was there. Even their science books were pro-creationist.

I went to a high school run by some Catholic Brotherhood from 1994 to 1988. It was an all-boys school at the time. Catholics tend to be easier to deal with. At least I found them easier to deal with, probably because they're not as preachy. But I didn't have a fun time there anyway, because most kids in high school are jerks, and I never really learned anything anyway.

The only time I ever enjoyed being in any learning institution at all was my first couple of years at a local community college. I actually learned stuff and had fun doing it. It was other mitigating factors (that really always existed up to that point) that kind of caused me to lose interest even in that.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

Wow, geez, sorry, Peggy. I honestly don't even know why I started doing these comics. There was no planning, no sketching, no plotting, nothing. One minute I was grilling burgers, the next I was making this in a hurry before leaving for work. I'm sorry if I upset you, or triggered some better lost memories.

For me, high school was a relief. Because of junior high, I was pulled out of the system and sent to the same private high school my sister went to. There, I met lifelong friends, learned to be a person and was in an environment that was utterly different from most people's high school experience. It didn't prepare me academically as well as it could (partially my fault) but it gave me confidence and social skills in a place without cliques, without a lot of the pressures most people have to deal with.

Junior high, however, was a nightmare. Well, it could really have been worse. I was never beaten up, was only 'pushed' once in the dark. I was made fun of and sung about. And so on.

If you like, I can put the comics behind a cut or something. I don't know. I wasn't meaning to cause anyone pain by making them.

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for her, obviously (she's napping in the next room! :D ) but I get the impression Peg wasn't traumatized so much as just pondering how different her school situation was from the usual. It really doesn't sound like Peggy to ever want anyone to not do their art! And she's never talked about her high school traumas like they're still a really painful experience -- it's sweet of you to worry about her, but I really suspect things are fine. If I'm totally off base, I'm sure Peg will correct me and/or administer a sound mauling. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, it's not triggering or anything - this kinda started as a comment in the latest one but I decided not to spam your lj with it, and it ended up turning into a big rambling thing!

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we also owe a certain anonymous somebody a REALLY BIG FAVOR for helping us open you up like that. I think that might, in fact, be the single best-timed event I have witnessed in my entire life. ♥

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

Might I comment that the extreme isolation of Mr. Pinkwater's works was both terrifying and envious to me. I was both a bit like that and not ENOUGH like that. I wanted to go to midnight showings at archaic movie theatres or turn on the late night television to the lizard channel while the glue fumes form my failed model airplanes make me queasy.

No one has a normal childhood.

[silverblue.livejournal.com]

One good thing about my highschool was that my teachers were really supportive of me and went out of their way, hugely, to help me. Weekend classes, training, extra assignments, smiling at me, always saying hello in the supermarket. My life with my peers was pretty miserable, and I had OCD at that point and was self-harming and badly depressed, BUT. The teachers REALLY tried. And it paid off, I graduated Dux.

However, if I hadn't had teachers who were aware I was having bad socialization issues and depression as a result, I think I would have been bored. Instead, they engaged me with fun stuff, gave me weird art projects. They really cared, the majority of them.

I don't think most of the students deserved them!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Mine kinda... gave up.. after a while. It was the kind of depression you can only throw so much of your resources into. A couple teachers managed to engage my interest (geology is one of the few areas of science I learnt about in school rather than because I learnt a bit on my own, for instance) but most of 'em couldn't get past the thick, thick walls I had up then.

It is good to hear that things did go well for some of the other bright kids!

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have known you back then :/

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

You know how some people brighten a room when they come in from the force of their personality? And other people brighten it by leaving, for the same reason? I think I was very much the latter.

Also, since that would be way pre-transition, I probably would have been incredibly shy because AGGH GIRLS THEY ARE ALIENS AND I MIGHT GIVE OFFENSE and all.

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

I was a very different person then, very confused and insecure and awkward. it would have done me wonders to know someone like you, to know I was not alone

[darkwolfie.livejournal.com]

Damn.

Sorta like mine.