Post-secondary or grade school.
The racism, discrimination, and segregation. As a Native American in a white school, it was frequently traumatic. Frequently assaulted and threatened by teachers and the principal to cut my long hair. Then had to sit in class to learn about how all those things I was actively experiencing were in America’s past was bullshit. <30 years ago.
How dumb it all is. Seriously. The highly regimented structure of curricula and examination is a shitty way to learn. It’s optimised for making teaching and grading easier. And also teaching young people to be obedient facile production line workers.
But intellectually and academically, it always seemed obviously bad and boring to me. And I’ve since gotten to understand a number of academic topics relatively well to know how true this is. Proper understanding, intellectually, and skill in application, are things that are far more organic and purpose driven than the shitty curricula that pencil pushing educators spit out as though the human mind were an excel spread sheet.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but in hindsight, not getting diagnosed with ADHD was the hardest part for me. I guess at the time, there were still a lot of misconceptions about it, so my parents and teachers never recognized it for what it was. Because I was placed in a “gifted and talented” program when I was young, my slipping grades were just attributed to laziness instead of a disorder. That spiraled into many other problems in school; failing classes, getting into trouble, and several lifelong anxieties that still follow me many years later.
Honestly, my whole life would probably have gone in a much different direction if I had actually gotten the help I needed as a kid. I don’t blame anybody for not recognizing it, but it does suck having slipped through the cracks like that.
Indeed. It got worse as a got older and the rails were peeled away, peaking post college. It got easier as my wife and I divided tasks based on strengths. Got diagnosed 2 years ago when she mentioned she thought I might have adhd, brought on by my distractability around our toddler. It really makes the rest of my life understandable
How was the process of getting diagnosed for you? I tried seeking a diagnosis a while back, but was told that it would be difficult to do without any kind of prior assessments from childhood. With mental health being so poorly covered by insurance, I’ve been hesitant to go through a lengthy evaluation process.
It went fine? It involved filling out several forms including by parents or someone that knew me during childhood and I think a current one too which could be my wife. It was 3 sessions, an intro, the actual testing, and then going over the results. It was all remote for me. I believe I had to bring this up with my pcp first to get an order for testing. I got diagnosed at behavioral health clinic. Insurance covered it mostly, but my wife’s insurance is pretty good because she works for an Amazon subsidiary, so ymmv.
Now therapy and medication on the other side has been harder for me. First therapist didn’t seem to know anything about adhd (I went with a new place since the diagnosers didn’t have prescribing ability). I’ve been since then looking for something else but have been having trouble finding a place that prescribes/accepts my insurance/I just lose focus and stop looking for a few months, gee. I found two a few months ago, but one said prescribing appointments are a year out and the other said a provider would contact me but I don’t think had yet, and yeah since then I have not made an effort to contact, I really should
Sorry for the rambling and inexact details, memory issues 😜
Edit: I think the testing session was 2 hours? Also it was interesting to see some memory games during testing that I thought I was good at, and as it progressed I just completely disintegrated in my ability to do it
Yeah, I think a lot of us that grew up in the 90s/00s went through a very similar experience. Kids who excelled early were assumed to be advanced, but a lot of times that “advancement” doesn’t stick. And it’s compounded by the fact that those of us who went through this never really learned how to study; we were able to pick up on concepts very easily early on, so we never learned how to actually take notes or read material in a way that reinforced knowledge retention. We were able to get by with “skipping” the actual learning part.
So when we reached the grade level where we can no longer just effectively “wing it”, we’re trapped because we don’t know how to properly study, and teachers won’t teach you how because you “should have” already figured that out several grades ago, and if you passed those classes already then surely it’s because you knew how to study all along and are just getting lazy with it now, right?
This video by Dr K articulates this concept a lot better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E
I strongly recommend watching this if any of you were considered a “gifted” student. He touches on a lot of things that were very eye-opening and felt eerily similar to my own experience, so I feel like the things he talks about here probably apply to many of us.
That was really good! I saw how long it was and thought, I’ll give it a few minutes, but I sat through the whole thing.
I could definitely relate to a lot of what he said. And I’m going to steal his quote and make it my new mantra: “Dark Souls doesn’t care! (if your parents call the principal)”
No, no. Blame them. It’s ok to realize that it’s not your fault. As children, we’re placed in the safe and lovkng hands of those that raise us.
And when those hands are not only unsafe, but also incompetent, it’s perfectly natural to feel cheated at life.knowing that YOU are not the problem. Society picking those people to raise you is the problem.
It’s the reason I don’t have kids. I don’t feel like I’d raise kids the right way. I don’t want to ruin my kids life.
I’m still salty about the GT program in the 80’s and 90’s. I got great grades, actively asked questions, and felt like learning came easily to me. But every day, a teacher would come into the class and take the GT kids to do whatever it was they did, leaving us schmucks to toil in the mines. I mean, how demoralizing and unfair is that? I acted out and ended up in detention or the principal’s office.
So then in high school, I always assumed I was one of the dumb kids. Took the easiest classes and they bored the shit out of me, but I assumed that’s just the way it was. My senior year, I signed up for a GT physics class even though I wasn’t one of “those people”. It turned out to be the most amazing class I ever took, and while difficult at times I excelled and learned so much.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like had I been one of the Chosen Ones. That whole program is bullshit from both sides of the equation.
Hey there, kid who was diagnosed back in 1993 here…
Depending on when you were in school might not have helped at least being diagnosed. Accommodations were basically non-existent for all of my schooling career and meds, while situationally useful, were diminishing returns. The system just wasn’t designed for us in mind and from what I have seen from my friends kids current accommodation is at times lackluster and spottily applied.
Schooling is kind of designed for adults to teach rather than kids to effectively learn since even neurotypical kids have cycling attention spans that aren’t all synced up. So while it sucks we didn’t get good help you also may not have missed out as much as you would think.
All the fucking assholes
Gym class. Why that exists in class format absolutely stumps me.
I thought so too, until i got to know someone who never had any decent physical education. It’s scary to see the lack of coordination and balance some adults can have.
At the start of my freshman year, they hadn’t finished building the “new” gym, which was to be used for the gym classes, so the cheerleaders could practice in the old, big gym.
So the cheerleaders practice on one side of the old gym, and a bunch of horny teen idiots on the other. Dear God the shit they would say, unapologetic and just the worst; “i can see your pu$$y! Bitch just did the splits and left a hickey on the floor!”
Beyond “Hur dur”, this was straight up verbal assault. A few days after the worst of these comments, we were told to go to a portable classroom where we learned health crap out of a book, then i went up four flights of stairs to the actual health class.
No idea where the hell i was going with that, other than it seemed to be a way to tire us out, until the comments landed us in class, then it seemed just a way to keep us occupied until the gym teacher could follow her true, Lesbian Passion ®, girls volleyball coach.
