I thought everyone did this, I don’t think anyone in that classroom was actually learning anything about the contents of the text, all anyone could think about is “don’t fuck up saying words out loud”
I was the kid that would whisper the words that other kids were struggling reading so they would get it right while also counting ahead to practice my paragraph. Then I would get pissed because the teacher would say to keep reading when it got to me so I had to read more out loud than the other kids did.
Forgot to mention the panicked brain freeze when you found out you miscounted.
During an inconspicuous math class in my final year of highschool I suddenly had enough of going in front of the classroom to solve a math problem. I love math, was good at it, but doing it live doesn’t sit well with mathematical anxiety. When it was my turn the teacher asked “Marcus, want to go in front please?” Then it hit me that that’s a question. So I gathered my guts while my heart was racing and replied “Would you mind if I said I’d rather not?” The teacher laughed and said “Yeah that’s fine.” My classmates’ minds were blown. I didn’t need to go in front for the rest of the year with which he made me king. I loved him; we always appreciated each other’s humour.
When I was 3 years old in preschool we had to get in line for the teacher who would write down our name, age, favorite color, etc. on a little badge so they could get to know all the kids. When I was in line the kids in front of me were like my favorite color is yellow, mine is pink and other happy bright colors. My favorite color was a very dark blue, almost black. As I heard the other kids I was like hmmm is my favorite color weird? Am I the weird kid? Is there something wrong with me? So when I got to the teacher I lied and said my favorite color was yellow. She painted a big yellow dot with felt tip pen on my badge which I wore for the next couple of weeks. I felt terrible for lying about it to the teacher, but didn’t want to say anything either.
So yeah that’s when I figured out I have anxiety.
Yes, I lied to my teacher in preschool in the first week of the first year I went there. I was also only just 3 as I had my birthday in the summer and school normally starts in September where I lived at the time.
Then I skipped a grade in elementary school, because my reading and math was very good. So that meant for pretty much my entire education I was the youngest in class. Not very tall to begin with, but definitely the smallest and weakest because of my age. I was made fun of a lot because of that and physed was terrible. One time the physed teacher took pity on me and graded me on the girl scale to not give me a terrible grade, you can imagine how that went over with the rest of the class. But it wasn’t that bad really, I did have a lot of friends and all the making fun of me never went too far.
But suffice to say it wasn’t till uni that I really started to like being in school.
Relatable
