-random applause that eventually encompasses the entire cafeteria -skipping classes to go to your friend’s lunch periods -”come with me i dont wanna go alone” -not knowing who you’re singing happy birthday for -“hey if i pay you will you go through the line and get me something” -knowing your id number so you can actually eat -only wearing your id during lunch period -that ONE security guard -”what’s even for lunch today” -HOLY FUCK IT’S CHICKEN NUGGET DAY -those girls who chill in the bathroom doing their makeup -fights = dinner AND a show -”hey what lunch do you have this year” “b” “damn i’m in c”
What the fuck does any of this mean why is there a security guard in your school what
That relatable (older) Gen Z memory: when all the projectors and white boards got replaced by Smart Boards™ around like fifth grade and none of the teachers knew how to use them but they Had To Use them otherwise the school just wasted a bunch of money and it was a rlly weird transition
me: haha oh god this is so bad im making so many unsupported claims and pulling all this analysis out of my ass
my prof in the margins: excellent analysis!
me:
when i was in high school i used to write my papers thinking wow i’m just bullshitting all of this. then like a week before my senior year ended after all the grades were set, i was talking to my english teacher and told him you know i just bullshitted every paper i wrote. he told me that while i may have thought i was just pulling it all out of my ass, i genuinely knew what i was talking about and made well-supported analyses. i only thought i was bullshitting because it didn’t take much effort and it all seemed obvious to me. if you do well on your essays even though you think you’re just making it up as you go, chances are you’re not pulling it out of your ass. you’re just a genuinely talented analyst, even if the analysis that you’re making comes from a subconscious understanding of the material rather than a conscious effort to study it. give yourself some credit.
i knew in the 2nd grade that standardized testing was bullshit. harry potter book 4 had just come out and i was at a good part. harry had just put his name into the goblet of fire.
during the standardized test, we were allowed to keep a post-test book on our desk. i diligently got started on part 1: english. at the time, all of the answers went on the same sheet, but all of the questions were in different booklets. so i finish all my english questions, read in my extra time, and then it’s part 2: math.
i realize i have answered all of my english questions on the math portion of the answer sheet. at first, annoyed but undeterred, i’m like. okay great i gotta erase every bubble. but i get bored around question 5 of doing this because… like… harry potter is sitting on my desk and i could just give them the wrong answers. so i answer maybe 10 whole questions in the math portion, copy the english answers over to where they actually belong, and then crack open the book and call it a day.
i obviously failed. this is the real life, not a movie. my parents were called in. i had scored in the lowest percentile. i was bad at math. i was concerningly bad at math. i could have done better just guessing than how i did with the english answers.
if this was just a funny story, someone would ask me “why did you do so badly when you usually get fairly average grades” and i would have said “i wanted to read harry potter, not take this stupid test.” but it’s the real life, and nobody asked. instead, i was branded stupid and bad at math. i got placed in a lower math than i needed to be in; got bored, stopped paying attention. knew i was in the “worst at math” group, started saying “i’m bad at math” and 100% stopped trying because the further i fell behind, the worse i got. through the rest of my academic career – until senior year in high school, i never got above a c on a math test, because i was “just bad” at math.
i had undiagnosed adhd. the only reason i know now i have adhd is because at 22 years old, i finally went to a therapist, who effectively said, “are you kidding me you have the most obvious case of attention deficit i’ve ever seen.”
but nobody had been looking. my one test grade had given teachers permission to not look, because, obviously, i was bad at math. the one time i got 100% on a math test – that one time in senior year – i remember my math teacher looking at it and saying “it’s clear that if you just focused, you could do the work.”
in college i’d take a math class and i actually “just focused” for the first time in my life – meaning i treated math as a challenge, but one i could overcome with the skills i’d learned all on my own, through constant work and practice. i got the highest grade in my class. i still think i’m bad at math.
which makes me wonder: how many people got fucked over because of something stupid like “i was too preoccupied with harry potter”. who had nobody looking out for them. who slipped under the radar because – come on, aren’t some people just bad at things?
No one is bad at a subject in school. Some subjects are just harder for some people’s brains to grasp the way they’ve been taught. If a kid isn’t doing well, don’t destroy their future school years by saying they’re ‘bad at x’ give them more ATTENTION. Ask them if they need help. Ask them how you can explain this better. You’re a TEACHER. Your job is for every kid to leave your class confident in what they’ve learned, not spit out a curriculum and leave the kids to fend for themselves.
There isn’t ‘bad at math’ there’s ‘i don’t understand what you’re saying’ or ‘i keep forgetting the formulas’-which can be fixed with a differently worded explanation or some flash cards.
There isn’t ‘bad at english’ there’s ‘I don’t see the message you’re telling us is there’ or ‘it’s too much and i’m confused’. This can be fixed with another explanation, or breaking down the information.
There isn’t ‘bad at science’ there’s ‘all these terms are making my head spin’ or ‘i just don’t get WHY’. This can be fixed by focusing on the broader topics and not all the little terms, or letting them keep pages of definitions, or trying to explain the connection in more detail.
There isn’t ‘bad at history’ there’s just ‘i’m bad at remembering dates’ and ‘this class is boring’, which can be fixed by maybe giving them the dates first and then filling in what happened (what happened in the year 500) or spicing up the curriculum! Have them put on skits, write stories, draw pretty diagrams!
If a kid is failing in a subject, it doesn’t mean they’re stupid. It means the WAY they’re being taught isn’t working for their brain.
-sincerely, an autistic lizard who gets good grades, but still gets extremely frustrated and gives up if i have trouble understand something, sucked at history until my teacher made it fun, and definitely wouldn’t be where I am today without adults who were willing to sit down and work with me until I figured it out.
CaptainBubblebath 