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I know it’s not exactly the point of the post but I want to go on a tangent and note that it’s 100% valid for kids to complain about school even if you have it harder. You should take their feelings seriously because their feelings are just as real to them as you hating your job is to you. When a toddler spills their juice and starts crying, those feelings are just as intense as yours, and you should respond accordingly instead of thinking “don’t they know about the wars in the middle east?”
Yeah, it’s all relative. It’s just incredible how your perspective can change in your lifetime.
I had an absolutely terrible time in my small underfunded high school due to chronic illness, family tragedy, coming from a poor home, and just generally not having that many friends. I got picked on, I struggled intensely with untreated ADHD and depression, and was just all together miserable.
But to spite all that, I completely understand what people mean when they say they miss that period of their life, and I’d never seek to make them think they’re wrong for feeling that. There’s a weird defensiveness about this topic where people seem to feel anyone else having any sort of positive association with that period of time somehow invalidates their own hardships.
High School is not a good or bad thing. It’s just a thing. An experience that was different for everyone. It’s okay to leave it at that.
Babies cry because whatever happened was the worst thing they can ever remember happening
I cry because babies are the worst thing I can ever remember happening.
Is that why I can’t cry anymore, I’ve seen the worst and experienced the worst? I mean that makes some sense after reading that.
I feel this way even though I’m doing alright nowadays. I think past a point of environmental or social stress, it takes away the ability to express certain feelings.
I don’t have strong emotions anymore but nothing is particularly painful either. That was not the case for me in high school, dealing with particularly bad depression.
I feel you there, I was told I was gonna die in my 20’s due to an aneurysm from an inoperable mass in my brain.
Got an experimental surgery, which technically failed… yet, here I still am alive lol. My neurologists don’t really know what to say decades later, so short of having a huge luck stat, I might be unkillable? 😂
And honestly, I would’ve rather go out in better shape, not achy af like I am now. 🥴
This 100%.
Sure, a kids worst day of their life is probably still a better day than the worst day of an adults life. But it is still the worst day of their life and they are entitled to feel like so.
I fucking hated school. I remember my freshman math teacher would give us packets with work for each day of the week. I would finish my folder of work either Monday or Tuesday and would just sleep. I had an A in that class for my work and my tests.
I failed that class because “participation is half your grade” Get fucked, cunt.
The good teachers teach because they love it and want to make a positive difference.
But a large percentage teach because they are miserable cunts who couldn’t work anywhere else because adults wouldn’t tolerate their bullshit.
I would not switch my current scenario for a scenario where I was back in school. Hard pass. Now is much better.
Yeah, I rather get paid for my time and not be dependant on my parents for everything.
Yeah, there are some things missing from that list, like the homework and bullying. No thanks.
And the endless testing that sometimes, especially if it’s not gone well, feels like your whole future life depends on it. No thanks, I hated that, with work I can just quit if it becomes overwhelming and all-encompassing like that.
Also, the dumb arbitrary rules like that kid in TX that got kicked out because of his hair style, which from the pictures I’ve seen, is freaking awesome (or fire? or whatever the kids are saying these days).
And not having money. If I feel sad now I can go for a drive or ride to clear my mind. Also I have the presence of mind and maturity to introspect what is going on and how best to address it.
Also if I feel really sad I can always buy another motorbike.
Same for me for college and highschool experience. School from 7am-3pm, and then work from 4pm-9pm and 10 hour shifts on Sat and Sunday, from age 14 until I graduated college.
Whenever I say I hated school, people always said it was my own fault for not getting more involved with more extracurricular activities. Those people weren’t trying to pay bills while making 4.25 an hour.
For real, as an undiagnosed ADHD kid school was a hellscape of boredom, frustration, and bullying.
That’s not what this is about at all. You’re missing the entire point.
The only thing being discussed is the amount of time you had to yourself with a school schedule, versus how little time you have to yourself on a work schedule. That’s it.
They’re not talking about literally being back in school. They’re not talking about bullying, homework, taking classes etc. They’re not talking about not having money or being dependent on your parents. They’re not talking about Mr Jones from Biology who wouldn’t stop shouting at kids.
Reading comprehension, however, is something that’s worth remembering from those days.
The only thing being discussed is the amount of time you had to yourself with a school schedule, versus how little time you have to yourself on a work schedule. That’s it.
I have so much more free time now than I did in school. This post is ignoring the existence of homework and extra curricular activities that your parents sign you up for.
But they are talking about seeing their friends every day? So only the good things about school then eh?
The answer isn’t nostalgia for school. The answer is to improve work with the “perceived” benefits of school. 30-hour work weeks, 6 weeks paid vacation, paid holidays including bank holidays, occasional half days after the end of a big project, chatting with coworkers that aren’t stressed out of their mind and actually given the mental space to be chill with you.
That’s the real dream.
We just have to deal with this lizard infestation first.
We just have to wait for the climate to cool down…oh, shit.
Ugh, no thank you, school was like a shitty job you can’t quit, physical violence is brushed off and your future is held hostage by underpaid govenment workers who either don’t care about you or actively hate your guts. I would sooner die than return to that time and place.
For me, school before college was garbage. Stuck being babysat for hours and hours every day with classmates I hated, doing extremely boring remedial work.
Once I got to college I had a lot of fun. I could learn more of what I wanted to and only had to spend a few hours a week in the classroom.
Yeah but then your health insurance is tied to your job. That’s physical violence too.
As bad as health insurance being tied to my job, it’s not the same as knowing somebody could physically assault me at any time in front of the authorities and be told they just earned themself a week’s vacation and nothing else.
its really not so much school as your parents keeping a roof over your head and food in your stomach. On top of it in my time minimum wage was pretty high when you could get a dozen eggs for 29 or even 19 cents for a dozen on sale. Did not take much part time work to pay for vidoe games, movies, eating out, etc.
Video games existed when eggs were 29 cents? I grew up with NES and the games were $40. $90+ in today’s dollars. Of course money was much easier to get in those days, for adults.
My first job paid $5.15 an hour. So did my second and third job. Miserable hell. Then I went to college and learned you could just say fuck the rules I’m going to bang girls and do drugs. I failed out by the way.
Kids, there are other places to get sex friends and drugs. It gets better. Don’t bother with college unless you want to take it incredibly seriously. Learn a trade instead to make the bucks without the debt.
yup. since the 70’s but they were in arcades and atari (settop pong even before that) but you could get them as low as 19 cent loss leaders into the 80’s. It was not the normal price but if you watched the ads you could pick them up often enough. Also almost no one made minimum wage. If it was your very first job and you were a kid you did for a time but if you showed up on time and sober consistently you would get at least a nickle in 6 months and thats a minimum. so it was not hard to be making four bucks and hour which sounds low but with the price of things it was pretty decent and this was pay levels that no adult was living off of. It was pretty much exclusively kids and college students working part time. Full time positions paid significantly more.
Yeah, no. Worklife is much easier. No need to worry about tests and homework and no need to sit in what’s basically an office the whole day.
To be honest, if I knew what I know now, I wouldn’t give a fuck about school tests.
Indeed, mainly because now you know for certain that with limited effort you’re actually going to do fine.
Sitting in the same spot is fine with me. What bothered me from school was walking 10 minutes to the other classroom at the other side of the building that you needed to reach in 5min. Or worse when you have gym and a class directly after. No time to cool down, quickly redress and to the class.
Yeah, that was disgusting. Even when they tried, school had a way of taking away dignity that is downright illegal in the adult world.
Get attacked at school? Defend yourself and get suspended. Don’t defend yourself and your bully might get suspended, but don’t get your hopes up because the school hates dealing with their shithead parents.
Get attacked at work? HR, the union, OHSA, potentially police are all called in. Whether or not you defended yourself is likely irrelevant (assuming a reasonable use of force) because self-defense is a human right. You have the full force of the law backing you.
Some advice on dealing with school shit for your kids: make dealing with you even worse than dealing with the shitheads. I don’t mean being an obnoxious prick, I mean letting the school know you will be forced to take the issue to the police if it cannot be resolved by the school. Nothing sends school administrators scrambling like the threat of a criminal investigation.
I don’t have kids, but I know some teachers AND some cops… police don’t like to get involved in bullying because it could ruin some kid’s future for being “young and dumb”. Putting a kid “into the system” for shoving a younger kid in a locker strikes them as “could make that kid not grow up to be a productive adult”.
And they have a point. Juvie does bad things to kids, according to everyone I know who has been there or who has had a kid go there. They’re as likely to be scared-violent as scared straight.
And as you and I know, it’s about scaring the school straight, not the kids. But the school often knows all this. Especially small-town schools.
Better send that bully to juvie than letting them keep on bullying other innocent children. I rather let the innocent keep being innocent.
Fuck bullies and their future.
Better send that bully to juvie than letting them keep on bullying other innocent children.
Unless you plan on locking that bully up for a long time or overhauling several systems, you’re statistically creating worse than just a bully with juvie. The current legal system doesn’t have a good measured response for bullying. You either do almost nothing or dis-proportionally (and ineffectively) punish them.
Fuck bullies and their future.
And fuck their victims, too? Because bullies only have a slight chance (still much higher than non-bullies) of becoming adult offenders, but if you put them in juvie, that number skyrockets.
Look. I have no sympathy for bullies, and had to deal with my share of them. But when someone decides the answer in a broken system is to increase the suffering of minors, that’s when I put my foot down.
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What do you even do?
Plumbing
Well, shit.
I’m a college graduate with a successful career in my field of study. The hardest part of getting here was graduating college. To this day, I have never had a nightmare about college or work; but I still get them about high school.
At work, I have 1 boss. In highschool, I had 6 bosses. At work, my boss tells me what to peioritize. If I have multiple things to do, it is their job to tell me what to let slide. If we are behind schedule, it is management’s fault, and they arrange an appropriate responce. Timelines are typically just guesses that are missed, and true deadlines are rare. In highschool, all of my bosses simply give me work, and I am responsible for getting it all done. All work is on a strict deadline, and slipping is highly penalized.
At work, I can simply do the work, and get occasional guidance where appropriate. In school, every piece of work I do is combed through for errors and reduced to a cold score.
As an adult, I would not put up with half the crap we make students go through as a matter of course.
9 to 3
My bus came at 6:40 am
Mine came at 6:20. Day started at 7:10 and we got let out at 2:10. But didn’t get home until closer to 3. A 9 hour day not including after school practice.
I don’t know where these 6 hour school days are, but I didn’t get them.
Jesus man how old are you?
Same in New Mexico. Had to catch out of district school bus at 7:30, which means waking up at 6, leaving house no later than 7. Bus back was 2:45 which meant home by 3:30, at the earliest.
Only 30. It’s normal in Georgia (United States).
You can almost hear the country kids crying about how early they wake up.
They wake me with their lamenting.
What about the endless work you had to take home with you to finish, with some teachers even disallowing finishing it in class, having to deal with bullies and other idiots, being told you need to get laid and that it would change your life, finding out together with someone in the same position that it really doesn’t change anything and you just have to be a special type of stupid to think that, resolving stuff with bullies only to start getting bullied by teachers over your health issues, and probably so much more that has been buried as a defense mechanism.
Skill issue
Sounds like it built character. Hope you thanked those teachers!
I thanked one teacher by using the system administrator’s login to delete all her files like tests and assignments to print out. Bugger just signed in right next to me in one of the computer labs with two finger typing.
So your parents were failures raising you and you spit in the eye of the teacher who tried to teach you how to operate in this world.
Sad.
Bitch straight up accused me of using drugs when I was having a migraine, which at it’s worst has the same symptoms of a stroke. She also taught first aid so she had no fucking excuse.
Why are you at school while sick? Did your parents just not care about you?
Your teacher isn’t a damn baby sitter or nurse FFS.
She literally taught the first aid class. Apparently she was just as retarded as you though.
Because she taught first aid, it’s her job to be the school nurse? That’s ridiculous. No wonder teachers are leaving the profession, morons expect them to be the fucking parents now.
To me it sounds like they’re the one who “taught” the teacher how to operate in this world.
Sounds like the teacher prepared them for reality… which is their job. Commenters parents clearly failed on multiple levels.
I wouldn’t really trust advice by a person that keeps all of their teaching material in a single place with no backups and doesn’t even understand the importance of passwords.
You can’t expect to teach me “how life works” if you don’t even know how your job works.
But you’d trust a malignant narcissist who’s happy to destroy another’s work?
Seems like you’ve got some talking points for your next therapy session here. Did your trust issues come when your Dad left or was it your partner later in life?
Your an idiot
Hardly. I’m a realist and real talk… ops parents failed him badly. That teacher probably saved his life.
Says the moron who lacks critical thinking, talk about having zero social understanding damn
I’ve got plenty of ‘social understanding’, which is why I’m so easily able to see thru this bullshit and identify the root cause of the issue… and it ain’t the teacher.
You on the other hand, makes me wonder how much effort your parents put into your emotional aptitude.
The homework tho. It was the homework that hurt.
Gimme that homework now. I’ll absolutely crush those essays I used to have so much trouble with.
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And the exams.
They really need to be lower stakes. Year-end exams just cover too much material for failure to be no big deal. Should be that failing a test requires a few days of review to catch up on the parts you didn’t know, and then you’re good.
Homework should be illegal.
Homework is really helpful didactically, but it should be coordinated throughout the entire school to avoid overlapping crunch time and limited to 30-40 hours per week of combined class time and homework time total depending on age.
Math homework was the worst for me because I’m practically math-illiterate. I was only required to take one math class for college and there was no homework. It was so wonderful.
The professor was a funny guy. He always told us not to study on the weekends because if we studied too much, our brains would explode and someone would have to clean it up.
The homework was the worst part. My school was 7 hours in class every day, which wouldn’t be bad, but I’d usually have at least an hour of homework a night, some nights it would be like 3 or 4 hours, and that doesn’t count weekend homework, which could be several hours. I’ve had whole weekends shot due to homework. I think I spent more time with high school than I do with work.
Nope. I would take my worst days as a working adult over my best days as a minor in school.
Yeah, no shit. If my coworker tries to bully me, I have him fired. If he tries to fight me, I have him arrested. If my boss (I have one, instead of 7) is an asshole to me, I put out my resume.
There’s a lot of advantages to school if you’re a lazy bastard who just wants life to hand you things on a silver platter and are willing to pay the price of freedom, but there’s also a lot of negatives.
I think it’s safe to say that most Lemmy users probably had a shit time in high school lmao
Easily the worst part of my life.
Elementary and middle school were kind of shit too.
I had an awesome high school experience. Same in university, but with bonus independence.
Why? I had no major issues in school. Made many friends, fell in love and had a broken heart, just regular stuff haha. Good times
If you’re a social and relatively smart person (or just take the minimum requirements) high school is probably really fun and easy. If you aren’t social high school is either a job or a prison.
If you liked high school more than adult life then you probably peaked in high school.
As a teenager, I did not like high school. As an adult, I do not like adult life. What does this mean?
You peaked in utero
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Hmm I liked high school more but I don’t think I peaked there. It was just an easy stress free life with the thought of a bright future
High school was easy, but so much busy work. Homework every night? Wtf. Not that it was hard, but, like, I’m not doing that shit
Lmao. You did homework for high school?
That’s exactly my point. High school was easy, but not doing homework caused me to get very meh grades.
I never did. And I got lots of Fs. Then I dropped out and got a GED and there was not a single question on it I hadn’t learned by middle school. I got a perfect score. I’m not a genius or anything, I just paid attention, read a lot and didn’t put up with bullshit busywork.
no weekends
9 to 3
Did OP go to like rich people fake school? Homework took up half your out-of-school time and I had to wake up before 6:30.
Here in Romania, it’s 8-14 for primary and 8-16 for secondary. 8-15 or 9-16 is pretty standard for the UK. Those both include 1 hour lunch breaks.
There’s also been a push here in the EU to move to later start times for children’s mental health reasons, especially for teens. I don’t think it’s gotten a lot of traction though.
Googling around, looks like 9-15 is standard for Australia.
I suffered very badly because of the school times and the lack of sleep triggered manic episodes for me. Yes, getting up at 5:30 and trying to go to school on less than 3 hours every day wrecked my health and mental health.
9 to 3 would have been a God send.
I went to public school, described my experience + I did sports on weekends.
9 to 3:30 in India, and weekends only if an unexpected holiday was declared (for example, due to rain). But we had an hour or two of homework every day.
Nah I can do whatever I want now
Yeah. The people who long for the freedom of school life sure fucked something up in their adult life.
I mean I fucked something up as well, but it will get better ;)
Depending on the environment you grew up in this isn’t necessarily the case, high school and college particularly can be very high pressure and consume tons of time when you’re not actively “at school”. The pressure in college was so much higher than in a real job for me. Weekends used to be for homework and studying only. Weekdays after 5? Also homework. The stress and self inflicted pressure before finals and exams which determine 20%+ of your grade was unreal. Summers were for internships and those weekends were nice. But still not as nice as doing the same thing and getting paid 4x as much.
Yep, I work hard all day but get to put it away once I clock out. Not too mention I get paid for it.
