What was your school life like?

[VanitasFan26]

Oh man this is going to be painful for me personally but after a long while I just need to express how my school life was for me personally. I will share mine first and feel free to share yours.

Back when I was a kid I always got in trouble in school. Whenever I would try to ask questions or speak the teacher would send me to time out because they thought I was being disruptive. Since then I refuse to talk. This is one of the reasons I became an introvert because in my mind I was thinking "well if I talk I will be in trouble again" strange enough the teachers rewarded me for good behavior because apparently all the other students were being loud in class. I didn't know how to feel at the time.

By the time I got into middle school things kinda got weird. This student came up to me and he was shy and started talking to me. At first I didn't say thing because I still was in that mindset of getting trouble because I talked, but eventually the silent treatment broke and I started talking. We were talking, having a good time, but then its when things started to go downhill by the time we got to High School. My friend started hanging out with his old friend who he never told me about and started to forget about me. Then he would just hang out with popular kids and started spreading rumors about me. I already had troubles going back at home but this just made it worse. When I got in 11th grade he graduated from High School, but I didn't care. I never wanted to talk to him afterwards. After that I had no one else to talk too at the time.

Since then I was a very angry and stern student. I hide my feelings because I had so many issues happening back at home but I could not even say it since I was told to shut up about it by my teachers who was like "We don't want to hear about your problems". I was angry at everyone in the school. All the students were being noisy and the teachers were becoming more boastful and stubborn. I only cared about finishing my schoolwork and trying to get pass all of this nonsense. I did get straight A's but I didn't even care because I wanted to be done with this.

By the time I graduated back in May 2013 I felt nothing, just the feeling of "thank god this is over" and I didn't have to worry about doing this again. Needless to say the school really damaged me mentally and it didn't help that I had problems back at home but nobody seemed to care about me at the time. It was a dark moment for me thats for sure.

So yeah thats my life during my school days. What was yours like?

 

[Croconaw]

Oh, man. I don’t even know where to start. I was bullied a lot. It was never ending. Parents don’t know how to control their kids. Their kids bully, and they don’t care. The teachers don’t do **** about it. I had average grades because I just didn’t care. I didn’t have the desire to go to college, and I never ended up going. I won’t say anything about that, it’s just a personal decision.

I graduated in 2016, and I went straight into work. I’ve been working ever since, and I’m enjoying my life more than I would be if I were in college. I’m perfectly fine not going to college and it’s definitely not necessary like people in school push it to be. I think being bullied in school needs to be handled MUCH better. Those things can traumatize and have long term effects on people long into adulthood. Most of my anxiety stemmed from being bullied in the past. I’ve definitely gotten more positive and less anxious over the past few years, but my opinion still stands.

The elementary school I used to attend is advertising themselves as a bully-free school and it’s absolutely not true. They don’t hold students accountable for their actions. They don’t do anything to help the victims. Nobody should be advertising that they’re bully free. Obviously bullying happens, but it’s HOW you handle it. You don’t handle it by ignoring it. That doesn’t make it go away. If kids were held accountable for their actions, they wouldn’t be bullying and finding amusement out of hurting somebody else.

Some parents don’t even know their child is bullying, and that’s a major problem. The school officials need to notify that child’s parents immediately so that child can learn a lesson and not do **** like this. Teachers need not to play hero and try to put a stop to it themselves. It’s either they don’t care or do very little. It’s concerning. I’m sorry for my rant. Bullies just piss me off.

 

[Midoriya]

In elementary school I was always the quiet kid, reading books about different things and not really talking to anyone else. I ended up throwing temper tantrums frequently and caused uhhh… quite a bit of destruction. It wasn’t until later that we found out this was because of my Aspergers, and I was put on an antipsychotic for it.

Middle school wasn’t much better. I sat alone at lunch every day of every year, 24/7/365, because all the “popular” kids deemed to everyone else that I was a freak, and so no one wanted to associate with me. Needless to say when I got out on the last day of 8th grade, I was so relieved.

I switched to private school for all four years of high school, and let me tell you, it made a WORLD of difference. It‘s a school for people with learning disabilities like Aspergers, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, and others. I opened up socially. I made friends. Everyone was friends with each other and knew each other, so if you did anything bad, everyone would know. It was a small school. I even made my best friend of 11 years now there. I credit that place for shaping me into a better person and changing the very trajectory of my life.

I went to a private university as well. It was different. A lot, lot, LOT more studious and difficult. It’s one of the top ranking universities in my state. I managed to graduate only by dedicating my heart and setting it ablaze, studying literally everything I could, going to tutors, and not socializing much at all. I did enjoy the people there and still do, but man was that way more difficult than high school.

Now that I’m out of school and probably won’t go back for graduate school due to time and money constraints, I’m beginning to realize the gap in experience for people trying to get hired. What Croconaw says rings true on this front, university isn’t for everyone, and if you’d rather spend time gaining experience, that’s really good too. All university does is give you an edge towards getting hired. That is, if you applied yourself in uni. Thankfully I did and I also have worked six or seven jobs since I was 18, so I have a pretty good resume.

Last thing I’m going to say is that while outright bullying is certainly a problem in many schools, so is exclusion. I was excluded a TON in elementary and middle school, and that’s what caused me to switch to private school. Being hurt by others due to bullying is unacceptable, but excluding others just because they’re different from you SHOULD be unacceptable as well. It’s the worst feeling in the world when you feel lonely and you don’t have anyone to talk to. I speak from experience. If you see someone who feels excluded while in school, don’t be afraid to reach out to them. That’s all.

 

[daringred_]

can't complain overall. despite two events during highschool in particular probably contributing to my poor mental health today, i do still miss it (to the point of frequently having school-themed dreams) and would love to go back if i could. b

primary school was chill as all hell. everyone in our class generally got along. i was placed in the gifted and talented group as soon as it was introduced, i studied trumpet from Y3-6, i was the first in my class to become free reader (that means you can read books that aren't deliberately written for kids) at age 5, and the school lunches were good. i was there when they transplanted the playground to put a carpark where it originally was and revamped the original half, installing a jungle gym and stuff. i have a lot of vivid memories of primary school, like: when i accidentally threw my favorite beanie baby and it got stuck on the pipes attached to the wall outside where you could play ball games and had to get it through the girls' toilet window; biting a girl so hard that she bled because she wouldn't let go of my friend, which i got several breaktime detentions for; watching blink in class (i was 8), which got me into doctor who; playing myst at the same age during english classes, which was so much fun; and a bunch of the school plays i was in, even if it was only small roles because i was shy. plus a bunch more. primary school was a good time.

highschool. meh. i adjusted decently. this school also went through changes while i was there. when i started, our uniform was skirts/trousers and a blue sweatshirt. when i left, it was skirts/trousers, black blazers and your house colored tie. we became an 'academy'. the beloved headmaster died of cancer, and we went through two others after him while half the staff left because they didn't agree with the way they ran things. (the school never recovered.) by the time i left, maybe 2-4 of the teachers that taught me in my first year still worked there. the science corridor and main entrance areas were remodeled. again, the school meals tasted great. for the most part, it was a good time. i struggled to make friends when i arrived. a lot of the students who were also from my primary school drifted and formed other friendship groups. (we all still got along great, it was just small cliques forming, although i use the term loosely.) i got bullied psychologically by some other girl in all my classes who couldn't stand that i threatened her position as one of the smartest people in our year group, leading me to try to unalive myself at age 12, and the school ultimately did zero about it. it was chill for almost the entire way until graduation after that. right at the end, i got messed up when my favorite teacher (who turned out to be a homophobe) accused me of stalking her because i was apparently madly, unhealthily in love with her. (her evidence being that my friend group hung around where she had corridor duty, i had a map-themed planner, i loved geography (her subject) and my form tutor placed me in her empty classroom when i broke down the morning after my cat was put down.) all the staff turned on me, the school refused to do anything about it, and i was punished instead and kicked out of sixth form because she refused to teach a-level geography if i was enrolled. i got in on the first day of term, studying something else, and she ultimately left 6 months into the first year because it turned out she'd been sleeping with her superior and best-friend's boyfriend, who'd gotten her knocked up. (she also flirted back with male minors in my class, so-)

i have a lot of positive highschool memories though, don't get me wrong. i just obviously remember the Trauma a lot more. there was a lot i loved, including 99% of the other teachers, and if you cut out these two terrible events, it was easily the best time of my life. i definitely peaked in highschool.

 

[BakaRina]

I went through a few schools when I was around seven or so because I was causing trouble and bothered students because of my undiscovered autism then. It wasn't until I was in second grade that I mellowed down and started to partake in school stuff. I'm so thankful for that since my teacher was so kind to me and I fondly remember her to this day for being there for me.

Life went on until I entered my first middle school, where I got bullied and attacked at often and I'm honestly not surprised I didn't retaliate from that. It wasn't until around February or so that it got serious, where one of the students decided to push me up the stairs (I know that probably sounds strange, but it's how I remember it) and somehow my right leg bones snapped in half, and I couldn't feel it anymore. I was shocked and couldn't think that something like this happened to me. Teachers, an ambulance and my parents were called about this and hours later I had a cast wrapped around my leg. You want to know something? That school was horrible, seriously horrible. I heard that the cameras weren't on in the stairway and haven't been on for a long time. Like damn, I wasn't even surprised at this rate. Anyways, I had to go through a lot, call out the student who hurt me, sue that school and find me a better middle school to enroll in and soon I had to go through recovery to get me to walk after my bones healed up.

Luckily for, I found a better school just less than a mile for me and I loved it, its where I got some friends that I enjoyed spending time with and got to know overtime. If it wasn't for the actions of that person, I wouldn't have transferred to a better school.

High school was good, I discovered my love of books, met new friends and enjoyed my teachers there. Not much to talk about it since it wasn't eventful as the last few schools.

 

[Neb]

I’ve said this many times, but it was a downwards spiral. It’s a really depressing story, so into the spoiler tag it goes (I also left out some details since they’re a bit disturbing)

Spoiler: Content warning: Extreme bullying and dog death

In elementary school I was the weird kid nobody sat by on the bus. Kids gave me dirty looks sometimes, but it rarely escalated to anything worse. I also made several friends who were also on the autism spectrum. They made me feel less lonely and I’m still friends with two of them now.

During the first year of middle school kids would scream at me and one shoved me into a water fountain. When my parents asked for aide to help with the bullying problem the principle said “his autism isn’t severe enough to warrant one. Right, Ben? I followed along with her ableism, but my parents ultimately decided to switch me to online school (if you think online school is bad now, it was way worse in 2013). A year later I moved to a conservative part of the state. I switched to an in-person middle school once seventh grade started. Once again I was the weird kid no one talked to. This time I tried to start conversations, but I always got ignored. I gave up by the eighth grade. Aside from a guy saying “you look like a re******,” and my crush telling her friends to yell “no” at me things were okay. I just wish those years were less lonely.

High school is a trauma I live with every day. I went to a “college prep school” that was only interested in getting good ACT scores. The rules were lenient to the point where you could say whatever you wanted without repercussion. You could also use your phone whenever you wanted, including during tests. On the first day I attended I got teased for looking shy. I tried to follow my parent’s advice and report them to the teachers, but they did nothing. Instead the kids always lied out of it and called me a snitch. The bullying escalated for three years straight. All of my online accounts were doxxed (including this one) and students constantly took embarrassing photos of me. They’d upload them to Snapchat and Twitter with explicit captions. If a day went by where no one called me a name me it was a success. My mental health degraded to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. Once again I struggled through awful Connections Academy classes for four months. Once I returned everyone gossiped about how I was the biggest “piece of ****” in the school.

I tried transferring to a public school at the start of senior year. Since I lived in an tiny alt-right town people recognized me on the first day of school. I got so many insults that I switched to online school for the third time (I was also sick of listening to edgelords talk about how much they hated their existence).

After graduating I still got harassed. People recognized me on the streets every day and they’d say how much I deserved it. Eventually one of them mauled my dog because he wanted revenge. I know he did it, but he didn’t confess to the police since his dog attacked my mother too. If he did he would’ve gotten in trouble to assault.

Despite my birth mother’s interest, I moved away the first chance I got. I was sick of those jerks who made my life a nightmare. Now I only run into them when I have to visit her. Whenever I do they stand outside of my apartment and take pictures on their phones. The police won’t do anything about them, so I’ve just given up.

I spent a few months attending a four year university. These guys in my Japanese class called me a freak regularly. When I sat by them once they said they’d report me to the teacher “since this is some bull****.” After dealing with them and a nasty former friend who blocked me without warning I dropped out of my classes and switched schools.

Community college is somewhat better. This one girl laughed at me during a Zoom class, but otherwise no one’s been too nasty. The slower pace also makes me feel less overwhelmed.

Aside from the reporting, the main reason I was harassed so much was because of my stimming. When I’m in a nervous situation, such as school, I play with my fingers, move my lips around, and adjust my eyebrows. I also look around nervously without knowing who I’m looking at. Many people mistook this as flirting and that made others think I’m creepy. To this day I wonder how much would’ve changed if I just got one of those fidget toys. Maybe people wouldn’t have been so hateful.

 

[Mattician]

People didn't really get to know me too well because I was a loner and super shy. They just knew me for my looks and girls thought I was pretty attractive. I had long hair for a guy and that wasn't normal at the time.

I just wanted to go to school to get my work done and go home asap. I didn't do any extracurricular activities after school. I didn't go to prom or any other dances.

I was also the smart kid that everyone tried to be friends with so I would help them with their school work. But then they would pretend like they didn't even know me in front of their other friends.

My depression started around junior year of high school. It had a little role in it, but wasn't the major reason.

 

[Millysaurusrexjr]

In elementary school I somehow had friends, quite a few, despite being a quiet kid. I would have birthday parties and my classmates would actually come to them. I got made fun of for being best friends with a boy, and he would say that I was his girlfriend when I wasn't, and I got so sick of the peer pressure that I stopped being his friend. It was sad because I enjoyed being his friend but he and my classmates made it so hard. It apparently wrecked his mental health quite a bit.

Then middle school and some other stuff happened and I was a complete goth loner! Kids would harass me asking me if I was a goth and asking me why I was so quiet all the time. It was the worst time of my life.

In high school I somehow got a boyfriend that lasted a year and then I went back to being a loner after we broke up, but that was pretty much my choice at that point. I was president of the art club despite hating it for reasons I don't remember?? I pretty much lived for art class at that point though. I didn't really get bullied at all in high school which I'm grateful for.

I think I always, deep down enjoyed being a loner in school but felt upset by it because every single day I'd hear kids joking to other kids that they had no friends, etc. Even though it wasn't aimed at me, it made me feel awful because I was actually one of those kids with no friends, like that was something to be ashamed about.

Though, I did have online friends in middle school and high school, which did help. I enjoyed talking to them!

 

[Tindre]

I was bullied throughout school and treated as different and most of the class just ignored me while the rest bullied me. I have been tripped, hit so I fell down. Spit on so I puked. People have been absolutely disgusting to me. The first boy I fell in love with called me fat thighs. I embarrassed myself by dancing something in front of the school and was bullied harder after that. Ive been called "pokemon c****" and a lot of other things. Mostly I was just quiet and drawing. I had some friends but they moved away or dropped me for someone else. So i used to play with my brother at school and his friends. I was in the worst class. I still have nightmares about my bullies and its a long time ago. I wish I felt self confidence at all but its been pretty much wiped out and I treat myself as if I am different to everyone else and not worthy of being actually close to someone and seen and heard.

 

[idiotdoomspiral]

Primary school was great, at least until like year 4-6 cuz my personal life started to crumble. Even then i hold some good memories.
In secondary school (middle - high school) i was never rly there so i dont have much of an experience to go off of. Overall my attendance was 43% or something like that. I was teased a bit during my first few months but as the years went by those who did that ended up being the strongest friendships i had there. At one point i was bold enough to wear a doge shirt and soul eater shoulderbag to school and somehow in this forsaken universe no one picked on me for it, if anything happened they were compliments or ppl raving on abt how funny and cool rage comics were at the time. I somehow got ppl to watch soul eater instead of getting food thrown at me at lunch for being a smelly weeb or whatever. Very strange
I spent a *lot* of time alone and i noticed that others would always stare but would rarely come up to me (if they did it would always be stuff like Hey U Alright Man?) figured out why during the last few months of school when someone else i befriended told me that ppl were afraid to talk to me because they were Literally afraid of me and i looked scary and i was like Wat. Only a couple years prior i was a massive crybaby who was afraid of getting into trouble and burst into tears whenever i did (sometimes just crying at random intervals.) so i was pretty stunned at that revelation. I have a baby wouldnt dare to hurt a fly face too. Or so i thought. Some kind of evil aura i have i guess
As abnormal as my experience was it's probably for the better since i was going thru a lot at the time and school life was the least of my concerns. My teachers knew this too so they didnt bother me abt coming in as much. Sometimes they would just let me sit with them while i skipped class. Had to drop a bunch of extra GSCEs to focus on the core subjects and my final grades ranged from pretty great to Eeeeh good enough dude so im good

 

[Mr_Keroppi]

Decided not to throw shade

 

[Dwayne Johnson]

it was alright, i had fun. i don't really miss it though
college is better

 

[Beanz]

not finished with school yet but i’ve gone to a private school my whole life, mainly because the public school district where i used to live wasn’t very good. i went to a K-8 catholic school so i spent 10 years there, in kindergarten i had to repeat a grade because apparently the teacher said i wasn’t ready to go to 1st grade. i was quiet, from grades kindergarten to 5th grade i didn’t speak a word. i didn’t know how to talk to people and i was scared to as a result of that i didn’t have any friends. my 3rd grade teacher (i hated her) made me get tested for a learning disability and autism because i was extremely quiet. i was bullied a little bit in elementary school, i can only remember a few times that people were mean to me then but i know they probably talked about me when i wasn’t looking. in middle school, particularly in 7th grade, i used to get bullied on a daily basis by this one kid until i punched him. thankfully, he moved away to missouri because his dad found a job there. middle school wasn’t too bad though, i talked more and i made some friends, two of which that i am still friends with but they go to different schools now. in 7th grade i also got re-tested, the psychologist doesn’t think i have autism but thinks i have a learning disability. she also thinks that i have an auditory processing disorder. i don’t exactly know what that is though? my mom never explains anything to me and i can hear people just fine. im in 10th grade now and i still don’t have much friends, mainly because i have nothing to say. let me just say middle school was one of the worst days of my life.

 

[Soigne]

i was bullied for being short, then when i stopped being shorter than everyone i was bullied because i was smarter than everyone and they didn't like the fact that someone who didn't talk had better grades than them. and then i graduated and never talked to anyone from high school again hehe

 

[cornimer]

Elementary school: always had a couple of friends though they changed over time, and while I was by no means "popular" I was pretty well-known throughout the school because I was a top student and fairly quirky (e.g. I talked everyone's ears off about frogs lol). Ups and downs but overall I enjoyed elementary school, I have a lot of good memories

High school: had one friend, pretty unknown until my last year when I won an award, didn't like the school very much so not a great time

University: no friends, nobody knew who I was, spent most of my time doing work alone in the library or commuting, miserable, was so happy to get out of there

 

[DinosaurDumpster]

I went to 2 different preschools. They were both more focused on learning how to socialize and be friends with each other rather than your basic abcs. The first school I went to I loved being alone, and I 'broke rules' sometimes (the only one i remember breaking is other kids roped me into going on a slide we were told not to go on, little kid stuff like that lol). Second school I went to I still hated everyone, but I forced myself to make friends so my mom wouldn't be mad at me lol

In early elementary school (k-4), I was that weird kid nobody liked. In first grade, i'd often sit on the stairs on the jungle gym cause nobody wanted to play with me. Eventually some random girl walked up to me and asked to play tag. In my brain I went 'dude, there's literally one minute left of recess', and out loud I just said 'No!!'. Then the teachers got mad at me and forced me to play with some random girl.
I was smart from k-2nd grade, then something must have gone terribly wrong because I became a straight C student out of nowhere. I could never focus on anything anyways (still can't). The only friends I was able to make were minecraft friends lol

Later in middle school, I was able to gain friends but my first friend group was toxic and just made me more shy and awkward than I already am. Then the gays adopted me, so I just became the extra weird kid in the 'nerd/weird' kid friend group.
And of course, all of my ultimate enemies came from middle school. Probably where I get some of my mild anger issues.
Not to mention my racist, pedophile, trump supporter history teacher Nobody liked him. If you were the 2 kids who liked him, you were the 'popular' kids.

In high school, more weird kids adopted me so now i'm just the gay band and choir kid. Band was a lot of fun, especially meeting bands and just chilling at competitions. The band section is also 100x better than the student section at football games. We literally communicate to the opposite teams' band through the reflection of our instruments. Every band kid just lives in the band room and half of our stories just come from that room itself.

 

[Kitsuragi]

horrid. i was in a conservative nearly all-white school district with few minorities and even fewer LGBT folk. my school did not give a crap about anything but sports, even their own school falling apart was fine as long as volleyball team went to states or had nice uniforms. they did nothing to stop rampant bullying and suspended kids being bullied for their "safety." one of my best friends was suspended for telling a teacher he was being bullied because he was gay and they called the police because they said he claimed he was self-harming (he wasnt.)

i was bullied but i don't think too much of it because it toughened me a lot and now i'm a very self-assured person. after like, junior year kids stopped bullying each other. everyone started talking to each other more and cliques kind of vanished except for the sports kids but tons of people disliked the sports kids for always being jerks anyways.

i was obsessed with animal crossing new leaf in middle school because i had no friends and i had like 2000+ hours in my village because i played so much. i also finally got friends my freshman year because some random kid gave me a copy of pokemon x and then i got into competitive. i was the one "weird girl who likes games" so that reputation kinda followed throughout the rest of my school time. now i'm graduated and dont care about absolutely anyone i went to school with except for my two best friends i kept from HS.

 

[tumut]

I wanted to kill myself a lot.


Idk being an adult is a million times better

 

[Alyx]

I was heavily bullied; physically and verbally. I had serious mental problems. I never thought I was an emo kid or anything, but that's how everyone saw me, and it was how I was labeled. I had my naturally dark hair and wore dark clothing. I wanted to be left alone and wanted to die a lot. I didn't have that good of a home life. I needed mental help and my parents never allowed it.

Now that I'm in my late 20s, I can say that things are a lot better. I'm getting the help that I need, and I've healed from the hell that was public school.

 

[TurnipBell20]

Elementary school was great. I had good grades, a bunch of friends and I liked my teacher.

Everything after that was horrible. My parents and I chose a particular school because it was known as one of the best schools in town. That turned out to be a lie. I was bullied, teachers made indecent remarks and threatened students, and the whole atmosphere was toxic.