My 13 years school experience summarized in a post
As parents, we want the best for our kids. We want them to grow up (be prepared for the future) and be emotionally healthy. There is a big decision that parents have to take regarding their kid continuing school or homeschooling them. (if you are one of those parents making the decision right now, i advise viewing this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGu2U3X9-sk )
I am going to talk about my experience as a student starting from primary school until 1st year of college.
Primary School
I remember we did writing and artwork, and i pushed for my creativeness. Also i met an English teacher and he inspired me for many things mainly origami and programming games.
Despite of that, my main teacher used to talk a lot about her life, and other’s people having diseases and dieing (i was tormented). She was a zombie teacher… We spent a lot of time making useless and boring work (like those stupid multiplication calculations that everyone forgets, and festivals preparations… etc)
Also i was bullied a lot in school and nobody could solve the problem. Teachers would even alienate me and encourage other students to do it.
High-School — 5th and 6th
My math and science professor was mediocre in teaching, although the classes were too easy for me, and he would punch students on head once in a while if they behave like the professor don’t want them to. My art teacher was crazy, she was always yelling at us many times. Our history professor was so serious and boring, he was so poor on teenager interaction. The Portuguese/English professor used to talk a lot about other random and unrelated shit and his teaching abilities were really bad.
The only good professor was the gym professor, he was creative and passionate about it (i earned speed running and jumping championship because of him, he is one of the reasons i still run everyday). Also he used to play ping-pong on the school club and inspire students, which was a lot of fun!
I didn’t learn any useful school content in this period other than a bit of math, drawing (i am still terrible) and programming (which i did on my own). It was forced to us to memorize useless history and science facts which i forgot, and music discipline was a waste of time, since we had to listen to teacher horrible taste of music.
High-School — 7th, 8th and 9th
Here we change to a new school, near the previous one, which is bigger but also less secure.
I was the magnet of bullying, even people from higher age which reproved 3 or more times used to bully me. (maybe because i could’t shut up and accept their illusory reality, i always replied them). Once again, teachers would fuel the bullying further and not help at all.
The majority of teachers were terrible, despite two biology teachers i had which were really passionate about teaching. Despite of that, we still had to memorize many facts about rocks and plants which is totally pointless for me and i automatically forgot. Also we spent our energy making those power-point presentations, which in theory is supposed to promote team work, but it just disgusted me and made me hate team work, because most of the times i had to do it alone, or i had to swallow the boredom ambient among the group.
High-School — 10th, 11th and 12th
For us in Portugal, 10th year is when marks start counting for university. They convinced us that marks were everything, and the only thing important for our future. So i was pretty pumped about it, i was preparing my mindset that i mustget A+s on all the disciplines. I wanted to be a doctor since that was the only profession that was talked about and praised. i needed to get every multiple choice right, every point of the argument that teacher wanted to hear should be registered on my brain database and printed in the test. I wanted to be praised for my materialistic capabilities of raw memorization (now looking back, it seems so stupid). Life for me was the marks and only the marks.
After some months of school, it didn’t seem right to me, it was so bored and i felt i wasting my time on school. Here was when i started struggling a lot to memorize the content. I was always wondering the why of the facts, but teachers would constantly criticize me for wasting time “wondering on the moon”, as they used to say (among others ones).
I had high hopes for my career (i was dreamy and hard worker) and often showed teachers what i wanted to do, although no one could give me orientations. I was confused on where to go and later frustrated, what took me to destructive behavior (i was addicted at playing games).
Each summer holiday i would rest and do what i love and the magic would momentary appear again, i was feeling curious and happy overall. Although it would once again disappoint and bore me and the magic would die after a month or two.
College — 1st year
One of the happiest year, although students seemed to not like me much. Students cared about the diploma and parents’s expectations and not really for the school content. The college was private and expensive, professors were decent. Although there was a lot of cheating and raw memorization.
I had high marks, although i was behaving a bit l like a zombie, i made group work alone (group of 5), i was giving classmates explanations for free, wasting my time doing team representative work (it sucks…).
It was the happiest year of school not because of the high marks, but because i met my girlfriend, an she made me realize how much school was destroying me. She helped clean all the garbage school put on my back, school made me obsessed with perfection: “if nothing went perfect, nothing was worth it”. I thought that i would have a chance to follow my project if i was really good, but that was an illusion and lie told by teachers and family. I was being seen as just a material/machine which is loved by being great, or hated by failing, and i didn’t realize it. I was slowly accepting that i was the machine and just the machine.
That’s why i quit school, and started developing a platform for helping teenagers overcome what i did.
I want to help people (mainly teenagers) improve their perspective of themselves and the universe, setting them more free and powerful than ever.
Join me by answering this short questionnaire (looking for 300 beta users): https://deeptheories.typeform.com/to/BYlPXD
