were you a good student in school/college?

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I've alternated between very good to poor - mostly due to suffering from clinical depression, not first hand symptoms of Aspergers so much (except for their impact on metaphorical comprehension at times!) - when you go for so long without friends, or w/o a girlfriend, it REALLY gets to you, in a paralyzing kind of way. I know society and those in my circle abhor any kind of mental crippling, or victim mentality or what have you, so I kept it to myself most of the time due to stigma (in high school, my intolerant stepmom forbid me to see a psychiatrist), when it could have had more of a liberating effect and pepped me up to perform well academically once again.

In my first year of university, for example, I did really well...got As in subjects, notably in Calculus and Intro Economics. Which others, based on the grade sheet posted by student number, were very few in that achievement.

The first rule of Fight Club is.. you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is.. you do not talk about Fight Club!

Heh. The lucrative kind of business. A simple little twist on an existing business model that no one else is doing that has the potential to make my friends and I some Real money. That said, I don't really share the idea publicly. Instead, if anyone asks what this plan of mine is that I'm saving money for, I tell them I'm going to open a sushi restaurant in Vancouver on Hornby Street just so I can call it "Miso Hornby" & have Japanese school girl uniforms...

I'd say average to pretty good. I did OK, but not nearly as well as I was capable of. I had an especially hard time completing homework assignments. Usually, I would just fail that portion of the class and get as good a grad as I could on tests and larger projects to make up for it.

I said I was an excellent student because I was very conscientious and diligent. I always did my work. I actually did too much work. My papers were always much longer than they needed to be, and I had a hard time prioritizing what was most important in terms of getting homework done. I was also bound up by perfectionism and following the rules. Although I hated high school and most of my classes, I did my work because that's what I was supposed to do. That doesn't mean I aced every one, just that I did ALL the work. (Though I did very well in most.)

The stress from trying to keep it all together while still pursuing my musical interests contributed to many, many, many meltdowns. Because I was deemed "gifted" I was put into the top classes, because that's what you're supposed to take, even that is not your bend (right?)

I would have done better to lay off the academics and focus on what really interested me. I would have done better to be a *little* "bad". Sometimes being an excellent student is not the best thing.

I didn't understand back then what was wrong with me, though I suspected something because I had trouble with making & keeping friends. I grew up before Aspergers was diagnosed. I knew nothing about self-care. My life as a student aggravated everything AS.

I had extremely high grades in high school. I hated high school. I'm in college, I'm doing pretty good at the moment. I hate college. I spend more time criticizing school than I do on the work.

"The education of youth by others is either an experiment, conducted on one as yet unknown and unknowable, or a leveling on principle, to make the new character, whatever it may be, conform to the habits and customs that prevail: in both cases, therefore, something unworthy of the thinker-the work of parents and teachers, whom an audaciously honest person has called nos ennemis naturels."
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How inadequate to the task of making a human being are the highest institutes of learning, the universities, the leaders and the institutions with which we are content!" - Nietzsche

At my college, the classes are Photoshop, HTML, Jquery, Javascript, Adobe Premier. It's actually a dual college/service company. People come to us if they need help with building websites, making videos, or other computer stuff. And the best thing is, no homework. Heck ya.

My answer to the question is: Ye gods, no! I was absolutely freaking terrible.

Well, grade school I'm not counting. I loved grade school. 5th grade was the best; my 5th grade teacher is the one I considered to be by far the best teacher I ever had. One of the only ones I ever actually talked with very much, many teachers seem to just talk AT you instead of WITH you most of the time. That guy though, he knew his job very well. So that year was fantastic. I ended up popping by there every now and then (after the grade school had just let out) to say hi, which seemed to always be a common thing around here, as I'd see it happen with other teachers later on, previous students from long ago stopping by just to say hi.

So yeah, that was great.

Junior high.... er.... I dont know. I was on Ritalin the whole time. Coincidentally, I remember next to nothing of junior high. I know my grades sucked though.

High school... uuuuuugh I just didnt care one freaking bit. There was the obvious bit about being bullied constantly (though I discovered that those dimwits would wander away if I just stared at them long enough, like their brains couldnt comprehend getting no reaction whatsoever from me, this proved amusing at times). That eventually stopped though; the fact that I carried a golf club (no, seriously) everywhere with me half of each week possibly might have contributed to this (yes, there was an actual reason). Other than that..... ugh. The classes. So boring. So USELESS. There was something I always kept saying whenever people would ask me why I couldnt pay attention: "They're only teaching stuff I'll never need to know! Info I'll never USE!" My mother always insisted otherwise. I proved to be right in the end; The only useful thing I DID learn was typing (and I'm VERY grateful to that particular teacher for THAT skill, which I use nearly non-stop), and everything else... useless and discarded. Everything I know today, I learned on my own. Needless to say though, my grades were TERRIBLE. Gym class wasnt any better either. I haaaaaaaaaate sports and am very stubborn; this led to an absolute refusal to join in any of them. The teacher I had in that for all 4 years knew his stuff though, and quickly just set me doing alternate stuff instead, usually walking endlessly around a track or something for the 45 minutes of the class each day, and this idea expanded in the last 2 years (which is what led to the golf club I usually carried around). I've never exactly been overweight or anything, so it's not like that was an issue that needed to be dealt with.

Also I was TERRIBLE at getting to my locker and stuff in the FIVE FREAKING MINUTES that I had between classes. I never figured out HOW anyone was supposed to take that little time going there, switching out books and stuff, and then getting to the next class in time. So I just carried EVERYTHING everywhere. It made perfect sense at the time. Probably.

College: Ugh. This seemed like it was going to be such a good idea, on my way to a career in programming (NOPE). But nooooooooo. Most of the classes had nothing to do with programming. And they were even more boring than the highschool ones, because they all insisted on trying to "teach" me things that I'd already known how to do for YEARS. Many years. The educational system being what it is though, this mattered not, and I had to sit through these for... no discernable reason. I spent most of it not paying attention, and ended up with an associates degree that I never used for anything. I dont work anymore and just do whatever in the bloody hell I want all the time, so.... yeah. Also adding to the nonsense, the college itself was in the process of being rennovated pretty much the ENTIRE TIME I WAS THERE, so classes that normally might be held there would randomly and for no apparent reason be held at some big hotel somewhere (no, seriously, I cant make this stuff up) like an hour away from the place. Typically the hotels were in odd places I'd never heard of though were almost always high-class hotels.

My interest in computers never ceased though. And it's funny, that that particular topic, which I know the most about in comparison to anything else I know something about, was NOT learned in school at all, except for the typing. And I started learning the things around age 7 or so, and this was back during the DOS era. It's like the schools just couldnt grasp how to really teach use of the things very well at all.

haha same here. Why learn math when you're never going to use that stuff anyways? What the heck does the Pythagorean theorem do anyways? I was just terrible at math. Absolutely terrible. In algebra 2, I used to write bogus responses on tests when I didn't know the answers. It was a miracle I even passed that class. I just think my math teacher didn't want me for another year because I was so terrible.

For both high school and college, I did very well when I enjoyed the subject AND connected to the teacher. Otherwise, I mostly skated by barely passing. Several years ago, as an adult, I took some classes for a GIS certification at the local community college, and aced them all. Hunger for a better job made a difference now that real life choices are clearly at stake. Ironically, I'm back to doing IT work now. But I was highly motivated to get out of my job at the time - and I did.

Math is extremely useful in life, finances, business, science, engineering.. etc.

As for the Pythagorean Theorem, I know of at least one direct application where I can use it to earn, at times, more than $100/hour. It'd say it's pretty valuable. What is it? Finishing carpentry - installing crown mouldings, baseboards, door trim etc. I don't typically earn that much doing it, but once I reach the level of contracting work that some of my friends are at I'll be able to take on bigger, better, more valuable work installing fancy kitchens and stuff where the flat contract rates they charge can work out to well in excess of $100/hour - sometimes even double that+.

I s#cked in school but I'm dyslexic, ADD & have a rare low vision disorder that was undiagnosed till my senior year of high-school.