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August 2001 - June 2017

The School Survival Forums are permanently retired. If you need help with quitting school, unsupportive parents or anything else, there is a list of resources on the Help Page.

If you want to write about your experiences in school, you can write on our blog.

To everyone who joined these forums at some point, and got discouraged by the negativity and left after a while (or even got literally scared off): I'm sorry.

I wasn't good enough at encouraging people to be kinder, and removing people who refuse to be kind. Encouraging people is hard, and removing people creates conflict, and I hate conflict... so that's why I wasn't better at it.

I was a very, very sensitive teen. The atmosphere of this forum as it is now, if it had existed in 1996, would probably have upset me far more than it would have helped.

I can handle quite a lot of negativity and even abuse now, but that isn't the point. I want to help people. I want to help the people who need it the most, and I want to help people like the 1996 version of me.

I'm still figuring out the best way to do that, but as it is now, these forums are doing more harm than good, and I can't keep running them.

Thank you to the few people who have tried to understand my point of view so far. I really, really appreciate you guys. You are beautiful people.

Everyone else: If after everything I've said so far, you still don't understand my motivations, I think it's unlikely that you will. We're just too different. Maybe someday in the future it might make sense, but until then, there's no point in arguing about it. I don't have the time or the energy for arguing anymore. I will focus my time and energy on people who support me, and those who need help.

-SoulRiser

The forums are mostly read-only and are in a maintenance/testing phase, before being permanently archived. Please use this time to get the contact details of people you'd like to keep in touch with. My contact details are here.

Please do not make a mirror copy of the forums in their current state - things will still change, and some people have requested to be able to edit or delete some of their personal info.


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Just Hi
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Martins Offline
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Posts: 17
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Post: #1
Just Hi

Hi,
I finally registered for an account. About me: I'm in Canada, and left high school a very long time ago. I hated every minute of it. It wasn't the high school I would have wanted, but I had lots of friends. My friends made school bearable. But I was just going through the motions - like my life was on autopilot. I'm going with the flow. I didn't obsess for a straight-A, I didn't have a 10-year life plan, I didn't smoke or do drugs (my best friends did), and I didn't sleep around (STD's....).

I'm older, so I'm faced with the same decisions as before...go back to school or not....

I'm in my 30's. Single. No car. I love computers. I love rebels. I'm still a non-conformist, which many people my age can't stand. I'm an 80's kid - breakfast club, back to the future, wargames, ferris bueller....

What did I hate about high school? Oh where do I start.....
1. Never allowed to criticize teachers (but they're free to criticize you any chance you get)
2. No walkmans allowed in class (Guess that shows my age a bit, huh?)
3. No evening classes
4. No unions for students (And no rights for young people)
5. No freedom to read (Books must be approved by the Ministry of Education)
6. No freedom on computers (Ironic, and this was before the Internet)
7. No opportunities to take the GED early or CLEP/AP out of a course.
Was it CLEP? I can't remember.
8. Forced rote learning.
9. Creativity censored, and other examples of widespread censorship
10. Misc. ways they force squares into round holes
11. No talking in class (One minute they collaborate, the next, no talking...)
12. Incompetent teachers that still have a job
13. A hall pass merely to leave the room
14. Days starting too early
15. No independence of thought
16. Paid for the textbooks, but not allowed to keep them
17. No dissent tolerated
18. No cheating (Yet, it makes no sense, because when we memorize the same answers year after year, it's the same as cheating. And, since in real life, we can look up answers, how is cheating bad?)
19. No salary, no perks, no benefits
20. No respect or recognition
21. No trust (They treat all young people like they're bad or up to no good)
22. Not allowed to think for yourself.
23. Insert many more reasons here...

I hated school long before high school. It was obvious. No freedom.
It's like everyone is afraid of what young people can do.

When I found freedom, it was with people on computers or elsewhere.
Some were really into Wicca. They were some of the smartest people I knew, because they could think for themselves.

(Note: I guess everyone knows the NSA records IP addresses and all our posts, right? Right. We dissent from school!)
03-30-2015 08:16 AM
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SoulRiser Offline
Site Founder

Posts: 18,238
Joined: Aug 2001
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Post: #2
Just Hi

Hi Smile

You're considering going back to school? Why?

"If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them." - Dalai Lama
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03-30-2015 09:06 AM
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Ky Offline
Shadow

Posts: 5,201
Joined: Aug 2012
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Given 1469 thank(s) in 972 post(s)
Post: #3
Just Hi

Welcome to School Survival. As a substantially younger admirer of 80's culture, I think it's safe to say we'll get along fine.

Public Service Announcement: First world problems are still problems.
03-30-2015 09:35 AM
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brainiac3397 Offline
Machiavellian Amoeba

Posts: 9,823
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Post: #4
Just Hi

Wargames caught my attention. Welcome!

Personality DNA Report
(06-14-2013 08:02 AM)Potato Wrote:  watch the fuq out, we've got an "intellectual" over here.

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03-30-2015 10:58 AM
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Alistoriv Offline
Sanity Not Included

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Post: #5
Just Hi

[edge intensifies]

RIP GORE GOROTH
RIP SAINTVICIOUS
(03-20-2013 05:08 PM)brainiac3397 Wrote:  Stand up with pride and say "No! I will not be a McDonalds employee. I WILL BE A GARBAGE MAN!"

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03-31-2015 03:25 AM
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Martins Offline
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Post: #6
RE: Just Hi

(03-30-2015 09:06 AM)SoulRiser Wrote:  Hi Smile

You're considering going back to school? Why?

I don't want to 'go back to school'.

High school is not University. University today is not what it was in the 1990's. There's a lot of opportunity today that make a lot of the old issues irrelevant. The power that a student has from bringing their own laptop to school is very empowering.

I don't want to go back to school because of the cost and forced reading. My day basically gets taken over by school - for at least five years.
The difference is I have a goal and I'm not going to conform. I will always be a non-conformist rebel that doesn't support compulsory schooling.

My focus is computer science and information security. The job market is pretty strong for future computer scientists. There's huge demand.

I have to ask myself how am I going to support my future kids? How am I going to explain to my children - "Yea, I never went back to school." I don't want my children to "drop out" of high school unless they want to. I'll encourage independent learning options.

I didn't drop out of high school without a purpose. I started a company when I was a teenager. I was many years ahead of people.
Remember Gopher? Remember Prodigy, Compuserve, Rose Media?
I was coding in HTML and doing other stuff many years before the mainstream. I was a sysop and a co-sysop for a friend.

I can go back to school and still fight the conformity. There are non-conformists in higher education - they're just a little harder to find.

There are a lot of people - some say most people - who are successful in the information technology fields without having a computer science degree. They might have industry certifications.

I wrestle with my choice to return to school. There's nothing as bad as walking around campus and everyone is ten years or more younger than you. Girls ignore you. The only upside is you can drive, buy alcohol, and can buy a car. Other upsides? Many, but not that any of them would care.

There's a high probability I'll go back to school and equally as high a probability I'll "drop out" of University. I hate it already and I haven't enrolled. Preparations for it have already got me down.

By the way, I hate the term "drop out". I prefer "retire" or "quit" or just making another choice. "Drop outs" should never be denigrated or looked down upon. They are some of the smartest people around.
People don't know them. They could be a graphic designer, app designer, web designer, artist, etc.

I thought about doing a complete bachelor's degree in computer science entirely online. I learned about the "University of the People", it's free, accredited, and offers two degrees completely online. Business Admin. and Comp Sci.

MOOC's change everything, and the chatter inside academia is that most students drop out and don't finish. Ignore critics of MOOC's. MOOC's are the future, and it's only a matter of time before more of the traditional universities face up to it and design their own. There's a lot of resistance where I live towards them. Universities don't like MOOC's, despite what they say. They see them as a threat.

I hate to say this but when you're in your 30's, it's harder to ignore "school" and what it can do for you. I've always been against school, but I've never been against education, learning or knowledge. I think you feel the same way.

Unemployment for young people in Ontario (Canada) is four times higher than for other age groups.

Women are out-earning and earning more degrees than men too.

I'm not promoting University, just sayin'.

Another field that's promising is data science. 90% of the data in the world was created in the last two years.

It's hard to be a mature student.

The last thing I'll say is that if I go back to school I can enjoy a lot of freedom. I can quit, change courses, transfer credits. I can buy a car, take a vacation, ask girls out. I can stay up late, play on my Xbox or Playstation. I can buy beer, order a pizza. I coulden't do any of those things in high school.

I don't believe academic freedom exists in University though.

I hate school, I hate school, I hate school, I hate school. Fu (To School including University)
03-31-2015 09:16 AM
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raingi Offline
Rebel

Posts: 25
Joined: Jul 2014
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Post: #7
Just Hi

welcome to this forumSmile
05-03-2015 02:21 PM
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