Random: Schools and College

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Lonely and a bit of a weirdo...
I'm a bit more at ease with life now. Mostly. Perhaps just the rough edges eroded a bit.

Smoking was officially not allowed but certainly in winter you could clearly see the smoking groups
Sometimes teachers pretended to intervene but more likely just watching them squirm trying to hide cigarettes...

Wonder if they ever look back and realize smoking in even a small group in winter is extremely obvious.

I was always filthy as well and I always had a half smoked cigarette in my shirt pocket.

I think the teachers used to do a sweep every now and then and everyone would disperse

I'm kinda curious what is meant by this... Loner vs group? House vs obstacle course vs sport/game? Recess taken away vs not? Boy side standard activities vs girl side? Red rover vs four square? Older grade prefs at recess vs younger grade prefs? Jumprope vs chinese jump rope? (I imagine it's not called that anymore...)

Makes me think a bit how people change... Some are very much the same, some very different.
Need to consider too that what you see with people is not what you get... (high)school seems to be "social training boot camp" for many.

I've had a few very different schools and left home town so only had contacts with several on facebook. Also very different from usa schools (from what I know from sitcoms...) or uk (very few uniformed schools).

I don't think I'm much different

I do wonder how my school experience would have been different if I had have had my own pen or something to write with

still don't understand the 'college" schooltype, is it everything that isn't uni?
in french and some dutch it is also middle/high school

anyway
when i got really disappointed with that whole schoolshit, i totally gave up on that,
but there's no choice anyway (work at dads place was enough of a stay-at-school incentive
it already filled holidays and much after school)

so i got onto graduation with no idea what to do next
and an underlying great great fear,
things got bad after
my best friends left me out the plan more then once
my parents became the hostile army, shoot first, accuse later

also the good days of smoking, when illegal, it was so much more a social event
and all the choices, maroc, liban red and yellow, who has seen liban in decades? nepal, afgaan, kerala, paak, ao

*

how do you not have a pen?
i remember we had a while where writing with a "ink pen" was still a thing
the pot for ink was built in the table, and you had to dip the pen in to draw ink up


we had still a lot of old - prewar- materials
when the aussies got stuck, they got their schoolbooks send over,
that were 'books' to answer and write in, that was totally unseen here
but now it's everywhere, i think

Over here (belgium - dutch part) college is/was (my college is a university now and many terms changed 'to be compatible with other countries') 'higher education' (after highschool) Outside of Univeristy.

Primary and first high in a bit of an 'upper class' catholic school, ink pen was required and ball point a big nono. A 'lot of years' (not that bad ) after, college degree had to be signed with ink in the presence of the head (headmistress sounds so... kinky weird... but no idea of her title... director of something probably)... she was surprised finding a student that was not intimidated
My handwriting in pen is still a lot better. (not that I write much)

Difference university - college for us was university very big groups and hands off, "on your own".
College was smaller classes and still more hands on, more guidance by profs. More like a highschool extension. Some used it as a prep for university, others to step down after trying university.
Think most usa colleges (certainly the ivy) are universities?

Difference not the same in all of them. Sister tried a college first that was known to have a bit of the university mentality. Not even allowed to address professors as regular people... We had a few like that but more exceptions (and those also lectured in univ...)
Compared to 'my' college, even had one of my profs on facebook (lot of allumni in one of my previous jobs... me she didn't recognize -apparently a good thing- so mostly for her aspie husband that helped me).

Difference now is mostly... if you rape people while in university, you get of for free because so young life with such high hopes would be lost... Murder you do get some community service (but only because it was made so public) and the only people that will hire you "deserve another chance" is universities themselves...

A couple of years ago I started getting back memories of school. I'd be lying in bed of an evening and they'd come pop pop popping into my mind and I'd go huh, so that happened.

There are one or two blank bits remaining but I don't think they did anything truly terrible to me. They bullied me but it was more that they treated me as dirty.

My father also rejected me but I got over that rather quickly. I am not sure I ever got over being comprehensively rejected by peers. But I can't imagine it playing out any differently - I was so lacking in even the most rudimentary social skills.

When I was about 12 I was put into pre-tertiary classes for 'hard' subjects like maths and lit. but kept with people closer to my age for 'soft' subjects like home ec. That went on for years, just cycling round and round. I did well in some subjects and failed others miserably. My mother took me out of school when I was about 14, maybe just 15 (younger than the statutory prescription, anyway, so she had to twist the arm of some poor bureaucrat on the education board) and so I left with nothing of use.

Although I am great at physical labour, for some reason people don't look at me and class me as 'great at physical labour'. But offices didn't want me because I had no certificate. Eventually I was lucky enough to get an interview with a boss who misread my CV and thought I had a degree. I corrected her once I realised but by then it was too late, I had joined the ranks of the gainfully employed.

I was very lucky that my diagnosis was autism with 'severe functional impairment' because they put me straight on a disability pension and so I had a bit of a safety net while I looked for work. Lucky also that they were wrong (-ish) because I found life on a disability pension quite hard.

The people I went to school with would not recognise me. People respond to me on an instinctual level very differently now. But I am the same, probably. I package things differently.

Last edited by kuen on 13 Dec 2025, 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know why I didn't have the right equipment for school...I dunno

I do remember the old wooden desks with the little pot holder in them for the ink
I'm not sure if they were still in use when I was there or not

I don't think school was really my scene
I liked the social aspect of it. The smoking, the breaks, lunchtime etc etc but the classroom was a struggle
I think the teachers liked me but not while I was in their class

What the heck is "new maths" anyway

In my first school we had these till 1998 my family moved house just as the teachers were starting to gush about the newfangled plastic ones coming in.

I think I got to take one to raise slaters in.


Have you come to any conclusions. I feel like it might've been easier for some teachers to notice the stuff your brain can do if you were taking notes and writing and pulling things together. But I might be making some assumptions.

When I was at school the teachers theoretically had boxes of pens. But I can think of at least one kid who never had one. At the time I did not notice.


Oh this stuff drives me absolutely crazy.

Does anyone remember that last day of a school holiday feeling where you wish tomorrow was just another holiday day, even though you were often bored throughout the holiday, and you try to forget that school is looming but as the day wears on you just have that growing back to school blues?

I think that the first day back at school after the summer holidays should be lax, a non-uniform day maybe, and on a Friday. Then the next week you do Thursday and Friday, then the next you do Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and so on, so that kids can be weaned back into the routine of school. It would decrease a lot of back to school anxieties. Instead the first day back is always serious and formal and you felt you had to switch from holiday mode to school mode in an instant.

The anxiety I felt was unreal. Starting year 9/third year was the worst, because I had started my periods two days before, so I had to start year 9 with my first ever period. I definitely felt like a woman then.

I think I had a very different experience of school to you Tamaya so I didn't get that kind of anxiety

That must have been really hard for you

Boarding school. A decade of increasing hellishness . Was very unpopular. 50+ years later, still struggling to cope with the effects re self confidence/esteem/worth.