I cant keep up with school

[Justin417]

So lately I've felt drowned out by school, I can't keep up with any assignments or projects and my grades are starting to drop! It feels like every second of my life is going into homework, and I still fail. Also when I'm not working on crap I'm tired shitless so no hope in doing anything fun. I also start losing incentive to do work, because no matter what I do I always fail the assignment. Maybe I'm just stupid. I dont know.

[James Comey]

First off Justin, welcome to School Survival! I'm glad you found this community because from your tone you definitely don't feel great.

Second, don't think you're stupid at all. Most of the schoolwork is bullshit and it will be meaningless later in your life. Grades are a very bad way at measuring someone's intelligence. Grades are only a number which go up or down because of the number of mundane assignments that's been assigned to them that person has turned in.

Third, it definitely sounds like your life is being consumed by the stress of school, and a lot of us are in the same position you are as well. I know how that feels, trust me. I'm pretty much in the same struggle you are. We have to keep up with the workload our teachers give us, but regardless we feel so tired in the end.

Do you feel you sleep enough, eat enough, or drink enough water?

[Gwedin]

First off, welcome to the forums. Donuts cost extra.

Tell me: Are you currently in middle school or high school? If middle school, you really don't need to care about anything there. If high school, well, I'm sure someone else can give better advice here. Pretty much all of us here have no motivation to do homework so you aren't alone.

But you are not stupid. You may be stupid by one person's standards, but that doesn't make it a fact.

Enjoy your stay.

EDIT: Fuck sakes. Fourth time in a row Hans has beaten me to the post. :(

[Justin417]

Wow, I can tell this community is going to help me already. Thanks guys!

Let me introduce myself on a not-so-pissed-off level.

My names Justin and I'm in 9th grade. I can't complain to much, since gradeschool was my living hell, but my parents decided to send me to a private school. I didn't like the option, but well what choice do we have? Its a nice school never the less, but so extremely hard. The work is insane! I never feel like I sleep enough, mainly because I probably dont. After school is done, I start working on designing websites. And I wont stop working until my work is done. Which is usually very late at night. But to me, things like programming are actually going to make a difference in my life. Not the Roman Empire thousands of years ago.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, this community is the best I can't wait until I get into it!

[James Comey]

Perhaps you need to take a moment and relax. I'd suggest reading this thread:
http://forums.school-survival.net/showth...?tid=31327

Also, though you might be reading this thread, this isn't a bad read at all. I'd suggest perhaps taking some of xcrtieria's advice in this thread:
http://forums.school-survival.net/showth...?tid=31338

[Gwedin]

I thought your name was Bradley.

Have you tried asking your parents to transfer you into a normal public school? Or into homeschooling? If the workload is as bad as you say, even public school may be a better option...

It's good that you know what you want to do in life. You'll learn more by yourself in that subject than you ever will in a school.

[James Comey]

Public school? Ay. Pick your poison here. I've never experienced a private school so I have no idea on the workload. Public school is bad, and honestly, public school may very well be worse.

Homeschooling and perhaps democratic schools are all good alternatives that you should consider, if your parents are willing to listen.

[Justin417]

Cyberschool would be the best, just a matter of convincing my mom to switch. I have my own internet (yes its mine, I pay for it lol) and a good PC I dont see why not, my dad is alright with it but my mom well not so much. Hopefully after this year it will be a consideration.

Also, public school probably woulden't be the best, since the only public high school in my area is the one where there is a drive by shooting everyday.

[James Comey]

^Yeah, I thought so. I wouldn't bother with public school. It'd probably be worse.

[mpoole]

Hansgrohe and company,

After reading through this thread today I could not help but crank out this long post. Apologies if it is too long for some. Sometimes there is no short version of a long story.

I lived through my middle and high school years that were similar in many ways to what you guys and gals are living through. There were a couple of key differences that make what you are experiencing much worse than what I lived through.

First the similarities. I lived in an anxious world much like exist today. Today you have those pressure that parents and “school” are putting on you to succeed in life. You are bombarded with content that tells you that you are not good enough including the clear message school sends with its testing and report cards.

In my time there was the fear of being drafted to fight in Vietnam along with the uncertainty that followed the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK. Then starting in the early 70’s there were almost 10 years of uncertainty caused by political turmoil, economic slowdowns, runaway oil prices and hyper inflation in the economy.

Back in those days content for pleasure consumption was limited. There were no Xbox games or portable devices for listening to music. Albums cost 13 to 15 bucks and you can just be thankful you never had to learn the technology surrounding turntables and needles for those animals.

There were only three TV channels and they programmed in such a way that each had like programming on at the same time every day. There was nothing but news on from 6:00pm until 7:30pm everyday. With all of these news options and lots of news, it was easy to get hooked on the news and this fed fear.

The lack of easy accessible knowledge meant that news was a source of knowledge. This knowledge was shallow knowledge. We lived in a small world at that time because comparing current events to the historical record was tough work and when you don’t know what you don’t know, a current sad state of affairs is scary.

Also in my time I lived through the public experiment called court ordered busing for the purpose of integration or as it was called by those who fought this directive, court order desegregation. For four years riots were common in school. Once during my 7th grade year and again during my 8th grade year I was deposed as a witness in hearings to figure out who was guilty and who was not guilty of starting riots. Those found guilty were barred from attending public schools and they had their guilty sentence placed on their permanent records.

As if all of this was not enough, my father was a type 1 diabetic who we took to the hospital by ambulance at least once if not twice every year for all of the years I lived at home. He would go into states that could lead to quick death during the night as he slept.

Living like I did from the time I began school in 1966 until I barely graduated in 1978 took its toll on my ability to learn. It was not that I had a learning disability but instead schools had no methods that would allow someone like me to learn using those limited methods and resources that existed back then.

I was not athletic and had no interest in sports. I was not smart as school measured smart and I certainly did not mix with other students. Under these circumstances you become a target for comments and a target for mistreatment.

If you were not athletic, musically inclined, into drama, then there was not much else. Back in those days there was nothing for geeks to be attracted to so being a geek wasn't even an option.

One small example of this was related to eating habits. I was always described as a picky eater. My parents did the best parents knew how to back then and so they were determined to make me eat foods that I would immediately gag and spit back up after swallowing. The “you will sit at that table until the morning if you don’t clean your plate” treatment went on for 2 years before my parents gave up.

They gave up trying to make me eat things I did not like but they and others who knew me continued with the belittling comments about being a picky eater. Those comments continue until today but it was in the mid 80’s I heard a story on NPR that explained the science behind picky eaters.

As it turns out, some people have multiple times the number of taste buds of others. What taste a little bitter to one person will taste so bitter to someone with what the news story called super buds, they will immediately spit it out. When I heard that story I was instantly liberated from the effects of hearing people and their negative comments. In the past few years I’ve run across another piece on super buds. This story told how you could put a dye on your tongue and visually see the difference between someone with super buds and someone who others would like to say is normal.

The problem with labeling people as normal is there is no such thing. The only place where normal exist is on the dial of washers and dryers. There are advantages to have super buds and there are disadvantages which in turn signals there are both advantages and disadvantages to not having super buds. So all evidence in this one example clearly shows there is no normal.

The point to this long story is that living in conditions like I grew up in or in a home where parents fight constantly is akin to being in a shooting war and seeing the horrors of war..

I started out by saying there were a couple of factors different today from when I grew up. One of those was I could hide from the pressure of school. As long as you didn’t cause trouble or draw attention to yourself, you did not have to do much work. I declared during my last year of middle school that I was not going to college and this was like giving me a pass to skip most of high school.

Even my parents did not apply pressure on the topic of going to college. I guess their experience trying to make me eat foods I did not like, was a good lesson they learned when it came to making me do things against my will. They picked their battles carefully and college attendance was not one of those battles.

Today most of those reading on this forum are living in anxiety filled situations and you have this overwhelming pressure “school” is placing on your shoulders.

The second difference in my situation was that I stumbled onto that one thing that I chose for a career. Any of you who are gamers know what the feeling is like to love what you are doing. When you find something like this as a career, this focus gives you something to strive for which helps to mitigate the intense pressure parents and school unfairly place on you.

I began earning real money in my junior year of highschool doing what I still do today as a career. During my senior year I earned $4,000.00 using the school woodshop to make things I sold. During this year I skipped a large percentage of my core content classes to either work in the school shop or go to work at the cabinet shop I got a job in on the day I turned 16. I invented the concept of flying under the radar as a survival technique.

I worked for the same shop where I got my first job for two years and since then I’ve been self employed. Since the most recent slowdown in the economy began in 2008 I’ve been able to slow down and return to the topic of education. With the aid of many people online and the never ending supply of knowledge found online, I now understand what went on with me and what is happening to many more just like me today.

Several years ago I saw the movie called Ruby. It was the story of a 1st grade African American kid caught up in the desegregation movement during the 60’s. The last minute of this move explains quite a bit about what you guys are experiencing and possible ways to help deal with the pressure you are living with. http://goo.gl/iKPGe9

Also in the past few days I’ve listened to a key piece on anxiety that was helpful to me. Have a listen to this episode of Science Friday. Maybe this explanation for some will be liberating as learning about super buds was for me. http://goo.gl/w5GYyA

[James Comey]

Wow. I don't know what to say. I'm speechless.

I will say though, thank you for sharing this. It's nice to hear what school was like back in the 1970s. We may come from different generations and grew up under much different circumstances, but it's interesting to think that we faced such strikingly similar situations.

During the 70s from what you describe there was a lot (and I'd imagine a lot) of paranoia over the Cold War and always the threat of massive world war, and also social unrest (Vietnam, civil rights, etc), which is actually similar to today. Every day we hear about some crazy stuff that North Korea or Syria is committing, both situations could easily get ugly (especially North Korea, though to be fair, no one would really take Korea DPR's side if they were to do something really stupid), more smaller scale than the Soviet Union, but still similar. We've been hearing about dictatorships one by one getting toppled, and this is spreading even faster than ever with advancements in communications. Very similar.

I've heard how bad the integrated busing was. Arguably the issue was part of the reason Detroit is the city it is today, because upper class kids were forced to be bused into inner city schools. This lead to so much anger, and riots as well (most infamously the 1967 Detroit riots).

Also, it seems the issue of "normal" existed back then like it still exists today, which comes to no surprise. It must have been torturous to be forced-fed foods you didn't like, especially with the lack of understanding behind your eating habits. Actually, that sounds a lot like the forced socialization that schools try to enforce on introverted students. Believe me, I've been approached.

In addition, it's interesting to hear that your opportunities were quite limited. Nowadays, there are many jobs, especially in the technological sectors, but schools take such a blind eye to these jobs. It's mostly the same subject matter, and most computer classes lack so much depth. Oh my.

But yeah, admittedly, being a student in 2014 is much different than being a student in 1976, and it really has only gotten worse when it comes to the education system. Standardized testing has grown so much, and is really taking over the education system. Nowadays we have the CAHSEE, which is required to get out of school, and didn't exist before. It's all so confusing.

And mpoole, thank you. Thank you for having the bravery for actually posting that, sharing your experiences, especially when you grew up during a time where you really had absolutely no one to turn to. Unfortunately, the "no one to turn to" is still a grim reality in many ways. So many students are being misdiagnosed with ADHD, while many others aren't getting diagnosed with serious mental illnesses they actually have. You can't hate school, according to society. You must like it, apparently. If you hate it, you're bratty or "defiant". Dropping out is stigmatized so heavily that people really are forced into this system, whether they like it or not.

[Trar]

Thank you for your story mpoole. It was a good read, with some good insight too! I humbly suggest you find my story on these forums if you wish to read it. It covers me from elementary school to now. Not quite as long as yours, but still rather long.

Some interesting tidbits:

(01-31-2014 02:18 PM)mpoole Wrote:  If you were not athletic, musically inclined, into drama, then there was not much else. Back in those days there was nothing for geeks to be attracted to so being a geek wasn't even an option.

I know that computer technology (computer science is my 'one thing' that i'm trying to pursue FYI, and the history of computer technology is also interesting as heck to me) was slowly but surely gaining traction in the 1970s, much as it was in the 60's but moreso, but...there really was nothing about it in public schooling back then? I don't know why I'm as surprised as I am about this considering how behind the times modern schooling is on computer tech...maybe it's my fascination with those clunky old mainframes

(01-31-2014 02:18 PM)mpoole Wrote:  They gave up trying to make me eat things I did not like but they and others who knew me continued with the belittling comments about being a picky eater. Those comments continue until today but it was in the mid 80’s I heard a story on NPR that explained the science behind picky eaters.

NPR is great. And I'm pretty sure I might have superbuds too. I heard something like this a while back but wasn't sure if it was true or not. Now I know it is!

(01-31-2014 02:18 PM)mpoole Wrote:  I invented the concept of flying under the radar as a survival technique.

I should have done this. I was sort of the 'class clown' for much of my schooling years, but if I had bothered to do this I just might have survived into high school. Sometimes I feel a bit of survivor's guilt because I didn't actually go to HS, while most of the people here are struggling in it. I just have to make the best of my life, I suppose, and not having to deal with that certainly helps.

Again, thank you for this post. It was a good one.

[James Comey]

Trar, may you link to your story? I'd like to read it myself.

[xcriteria]

(02-02-2014 12:42 PM)Hansgrohe Wrote:  Trar, may you link to your story? I'd like to read it myself.

Perhaps this?

(There's some good stuff in that thread. Looks like I never got back to that question about college... and it's a good question.)

[Justin417]

I just wanted to thank you guys and this forum all together. I've gotten better over the past month, not great but passing. You guys have the best stories on this forum and it really keeps me going sometimes haha. But yup thanks I'm actually happy again with my life.