SL survery- did you like/dislike school as an adolescent?

I was chatting with some coworkers- all of them creative, artistic types- and was surprised that nearly all of them disliked or hated school when they were teens (and preteens). Some were bullied and ostricized, while others just didn't seem to fit in and none of us ran with the "cool" crowd. (note to our tormenters: Now we work in a visual effects studio and you don't, so to you)

Since many Second Lifers are creative types, I'm taking the question here. How well did you fit in at school? Were you popular? A misfit? Or something inbetween?

I was a popular misfit. I was one of those kids that could fit into almost any social situation.

I can't do that now, mind you... people suck.

LF

First two years of high school were kind of rough for me, all the usual nerd bashing heightened by the fact that I lived in a rural area that highly valued football.

But, then I was accepted to a residential magnet school in my state that focused on science & Math. It was the most intense, academically rewarding two years of my life.

Regardless though, one way or the other, I always liked school.

Misfit until university.

Mind you, being one of only three girls taking an engineering degree among 100 guys, it was going to be hard to be unpopular there!

Well, my class only consisted of about 12-15 students, throughout highschool. So, I wasn't exactly popular, but I wasn't unpopular either. I kind of "floated" in the middle as the quiet, shy, "sweet"you know how much that word gets thrown around in highschool) girl with good grades who could make you laugh.

I didn't hate school really, I kind of miss it sometimes.

Middle school was murderous and still, today, when I see 6-8th graders hanging around one another acting all happy, I think to myself, "I was the person you made miserable so that you could be happy in your cliche." For that reason, I will never teach middle school, because I have a chip on my shoulder the size of an anvil. Middle school is death for those who didn't/couldn't climb the popularity ladder. High school was another story. People did mature (I still can't fathom how it happened given my experiences in middle school) and with all the new other students that I made friends with easily it was hard for the very few people who wanted to use me as the butt of their jokes to get away with it without them, in turn, looking bad. No, high school was entirely different; I made friends with everyone, soaked up a million apologies from my middle school terrorizers, and I came out without any slander. I miss high school. Now look what you've done, you've made me feel old again.

i detested every single moment of the adolescent years of public school.

d e t e s t e d.

really, it was miserable.

I haven't maintained any relationships from that time, with the exception of my hubby, who was the *only* good thing to come out of it. In retrospect, I wish my parents had allowed me to get a GED (i BEGGED for that.) and move on down the road of life rather than idle treading crap in the cesspool we know as high school.



Amen to that!!!
*chuckles happily under breath*

College sucks, high school sucked, middle school sucked, elementry school sucked, pre-school sucked.

And since everyone seems to want to enter a popularity contest, I was (and still am) popular through high school and elementry, middle school I was still trying to find myself.

Yes, I was one of those 'popular kids' in high school, no, I did not torment anyone. Infact whenever one of my friends would start, I would just walk away. Because middle school was friggen hell for me.

I think I'm predisposed to feel like I don't fit in, no matter where I am. I was fine until puberty and then all hell broke loose. Part of my problem was that my dad was a local celebrity (tv weatherman) so that made me a bit of a target for ridicule, but I also brought it on myself. The fact that I had a relief map of the himalayas on my face complete with active volcanoes didn't help. College was the only time I really found my niche and had a rich and rewarding social life. Too bad it couldn't have lasted forever, hehe. The older I get, the less I feel like I fit in with my peers. I just accept that it's the way I'm wired. I was born with the hermit gene. I'll probably die single

I was one of those sensitive/impressionable types and doing my art was one of the few ways to win praise from others. Up to the end of elementary my experiences were great for the most part. After that, it was all uphill. Middle school granted me a fierce beating to my ego, ran scared the rest of the way...

Hated every minute of it. 'nuff said.

I hated k-12 with a passion. Never fit in very well, and got picked on a lot until I developed weapons grade sarcasm. My sarcasm was caustic (and I'd like to think witty) to the point I could make someone look so stupid in front of their own friends that potential tormentors learned to leave me alone. It's taken a long while to dispose of that sarcasm. I've buried most of it in impermiable containment facilities in Nevada, but it's not a good thing to have around in a person's psyche.

College was different once I figured out what I wanted to do. The friends I made then and the influences I took up during that time were wonderful.

Travel to and living in Asia after that was even better.

Ironically enough, I now teach high school!

Lumi

I was moderately popular with my peers, but generally disliked by the teachers (apart from a couple of them). I hated school; my old headmaster has long since died - had he not, I would be wishing him ill every day.

In junior high, some jerks tried to bully me because I was a little fat and committing the horrible crime of having top grades, but I guess I somewhat must have had "don't you dare screw with me, you twat" written all over my persona, as they never tried to do it twice. I've never udnerstood why though, I don't even have a "sharp" face or whatever... maybe I just did scare them with sarcasm, and walked away while they were still trying to understand my witty answers

Then in high school I got to be the happy freak. Everybody knew they'd always find me in my corner with some weird book, wearing weird clothes and talking about music nobody knew, but oddly enough it kinda made me, not popular, but not the weirdo everybody is laughing about either. Gues you could say I was the weirdo that gets liked? I suppose that playing RPG kinda contributed to make me seem "different", too, in a little town like the one we were in... different, but in a "wow, tell me more about it?" way.

School has never been a matter of hate for me anyway. The only thing that'd really bother me was the ton of homework to do, when I'd rather have worked on a drawing or a bit of a short story

mainly i was too busy to notice. but...

my main geek group ran the newspaper, year book, computer lab, and literary journal. we also had all top 10 students in our group. and of course the teachers loved us. we had more power than any other group on campus, including the student government and the jocks. we cut more classes than any other group, except the drama/theatre clique.

my secondary group ran the student government.

i also hung out with jocks, druggies, punks, goths, weirdos, christians, and other "cool" and not "cool" people. i was always friends with one or two of the school bullies.

Well, I grew up mostly in the smallish town that was home to the New England Patriots - so football and those who played it were king. (I couldn't care less about football or any sports) It was jock central - so of course i didn't fit in anywhere, being an extremely introverted artistic type. As I result I kind of lived in my own world back then and was not social much at all. I was even nominated for "Class Noncomformist" my senior year in High School. Up through early high school I endured a lot of torment for being different and quiet but it eased up near the end of high school. And I found a lot of the curriculum pretty boring. So yeah - not very fond of the K-12 school memories - but I really developed a lot of my artistic / creative skills in that time. All that time alone paid off!

I do take pleasure in the fact that many of my school-age tormentors are probably working really boring jobs now - while I get to do fun things like paint fantasy art, make computer games, etc.

College was a whole different story though. Going to art school I found people I could actually relate to - and that's where I really began to grow more socially. I'm still an introvert to this day, but not nearly as severely as back in grade / middle / high school.

I disliked both elementary and high school when I first started... but as the years passed (and as I transferred to a different school that was more suited to my style), I came to like it a whole lot more. I got along with a diversity of cliques, although I never belonged to a singular one -- that would have been too limiting for me. I had a particular comfort in explaining and introducing new things -- like techno music -- to people who would never have considered it before.

I just wanted to help people reach out and have some happy memories, because you look back at this time in your life, and hopefully, you got at least a pocketful of 'em. High school ended bittersweet 'cuz I had a bad prom, but (first) life went on after that.

Devyn--I got "Class Individual" ... our titles seem similar. Woohoo!

Daemioth: Hehe - nice! I didn't actually win the "Class Nonconformist" title, I guess someone was deemed even more "out-there" than me - but it was an honor to be nominated anyway. I actually took it as a huge compliment in that crowd, whether they intended it or not...

Haha, I got "most likely to be arrested for breaking and entering"

Same here. Instead of hanging with the cool crowd I was off on m
y own, drawing pictures and writing stories. So being a misfit kid paid off in the long run.



Yeah! Yeah!



Remind me not to get you mad at me...!



That's the general consensus I got from the coworkers I talked to- most of them, me included, would rather be thrown headfirst down a stairwell than to go back to our middle school days. Simpsons cartoonist Matt Groening once refered to middle school as "The deepest pit in Hell".

Very much disliked my later school years. The bullies seemed to get worse as they got older. Graduating and heading off for college was the end of it. I keep in touch with a handful of people from high school, mostly to get status reports on everyone.

Funny thing, most of the 'bullies' seem to have had a difficult time with the transition to college.

I was very very introverted. I probably hated it on some level, I know I found it boring, but I really don't remember it very clearly. What puzzles me is I don't remember the names of ANY students in my class (about 700) except for 2. The only reason I remember them is they lived on my street and were neighbors.

Public school was awful. Socially it was a nightmare and as for learning, what they taught was a bunch of crap. But I did pretty well with it getting straight A's in 8th grade, then getting an F or two in the 9th and finally quitting in tenth or eleventh, it is a little unclear I've never regretted quitting. I took the ged test. They scored them on the spot. I will always treasure the look on the scorer's face when she tallied mine up - like "What are you doing here?"

When I was around 25 I decided to go to Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. That was a whole different story. The college had a unique concept for learning. They offered a number of topics that lasted from one semester to the whole year. And that is all that was studied for that period. But it was studied from every angle. I studied ecology one year and sustainable community design the other. It was fascinating. The college had no grades either. There was pass/fail but more importantly they gave extensive written evaluations. Also, I met people I could identify with. I never completed the other two of the four years there because I wasn't sure what I wanted to study next. But the experience was an important part of my life.

I did not like school, people were stupid, teachers were stupid. did graduate with honors.
I have a couple people from high school I still talk to and I did go to my 10 yr reunion with one friend - we drank a lot but did have fun.
I did not like college and left after one year of it.
I've enjoyed working. I like the responsibility. Yeah, the bills suck, but they are mine.

I did graduate from massage school last dec. That was a wonderful experience - nontraditional schooling has seemed to work best for me.

I would not want to go back to high school.