School and junk and stuff. Advice/Experiences etc.

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This topic looks long. Just read the top if it’s too long.
So this topic is just a place to discuss school-related issues. Experiences, advice, etc. Whatever you want to discuss about school. But please don’t turn it into a debate about ‘corruption in the school system’ and all that. This is not the place.

Just share advice, and if you need advice about school, I’m sure those of us on the forum who have experienced school related problems should be able to help.

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Some experiences/advice I’d like to share:

Middle school:
-Experience: One time in middle school, I was outside the cafeteria (after we ate, we had to go outside and hang in the area outside the caf, with tables and benches and junk.) So I was sitting on this curb next to a picnic table, and there was this girl from my class sitting at the picnic table, and I like moved her knee with my hand, and she accused me of sexual harassment. And so there was a meeting with my mom and her mom and both of us, and I had to explain that I was just messing with her and that there was nothing sexual about it. Stupid crap like this happens in middle school. I also had to serve a day in IS (Internal Suspension) for this incident, which was pretty ridiculous.

-advice: have fun. Don’t work too hard, and make a lot of friends. Middle school should be a time to have fun.

-advice: you’re gonna do stupid things. You just are…that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a fact.

High School:
-experience: In my freshman year of high school, I met this really awesome girl, who like confided in me and opened up to me, and we were really close, and she would like talk to me about anything. (Also, she was like sort of goth/emo mixed, but not like poser-emo, like real emo) And we passed notes all the time, and it was just a really awesome friendship. Then my Sophomore year, we had science class together, and we still passed notes and she talked to me and all. Then Junior year, we didn’t have any classes together, and she stopped talking to me. I don’t really blame her, I was kind of pushing my Christian beliefs on everyone at the time, and I don’t know why anyone would want to be my friend (I didn’t realize how rude I was being about it at the time). So then Senior year we had math class together and we sort of reconnected. And became good friends again, but she had changed. And she was happy and all with her life, and I thought that was wonderful. But something else changed about her. Like the way she viewed me. Anyway, by the time high school ended I hated her, and to this day I feel like she was just using me. Like I didn’t really mean anything to her. And it really upsets me. I dunno what happened. Anyway, stuff like this happens in high school.

-advice: During your Junior/Senior year, talk to your guidance counselor as much as possible about being prepared for college, and make sure you do everything they say. You’re not gonna want to, you’re gonna want to forget and do it later, but I strongly encourage you to do it as soon as possible. It’s important and it will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. Don’t worry about which college you want to go to or which college is the best for you, just pick some and apply. Then do research on a good one for you, and apply to that one (or two or three) as well. That way you will have some fallback’s if things don’t work out, or if you can’t afford the one you really want to go to.

-advice: Find time to work on scholarships. You’re not gonna find a lot of time, what with video games and yoyoing, but try to find some just for scholarships. Half the time you just have to apply and don’t even have to write an essay or anything.

-advice: appreciate the good teachers, and let them know that you appreciate them. Forget about the bad teachers. You don’t have to deal with them for very long, so don’t waste the effort dwelling on the bad. (But if the teacher isn’t doing their job correctly, you have every right to let administration know or let another teacher who you trust know the situation). If you really have a problem with the class, talk with your grade-level advisor and ask them if you can switch to a different class. If you tell them things like “I’m not getting the proper education” or “I feel like my GPA/grades are in jeopardy”, they are likely to put you in a different class).

-advice: Don’t write or say anything on paper or email or really anywhere during school or in school, or to someone from school that is sexually explicit, derogatory, rude, or anything of a similar nature. There’s a 90% chance someone who isn’t supposed to will read/see it, and you will be punished for it.

-advice: join a club. Clubs can be a lot of fun. I was in my schools film club.

-advice: talk to/email your teachers, and let them know how you feel like you are doing in the class. If you feel like you’re having problems or like you aren’t understanding the material, your teachers more often than not are there to help you. If you’re concerned about your C, D, or F, they will be too. If you’re not, they’ll think you don’t care. (Do not blame a teacher for your bad grade. Blame yourself for not taking the action you should have taken when you noticed your grade went down.)

College/University:
-advice: make sure everything is taken care of when applying months in advance. And then keep making sure about 10-20 times before school actually starts. Things like Financial Aid, Student Loans, etc.

TL/DR, I know, but whatever.

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advice-Guys, just don’t slack off when it comes to school. So what if there is tis cool party with alcohol and all the popular people? Just remember that how much you work now, will pay off later. Also, don’t do stupid stuff just because everybody else does it.

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Just remember kids, no matter how boring, senseless and otherwise unpleasant you think school is, there’s always a lifetime of working to look forward to. :wink:

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Alright, you can read my full post in awkward moments page two. To sum it up it up, in fifth grade I played cello. I got my third grade vocals teacher. I hate singing. In sixth grade switched to band percussion, but didn’t tell my strings teacher, she had to ask other people. My parents wrote her an email, her response was I’m so sad about her switch hope she considers it next year to come back.(nope!) my school got budget cut, so went to music at middle school, then took a bus back to elementary school. So half of the year is up, so my elementary school is starting vocal music nstead of art. So I have to go to vocal music too, and my teacher is my strings teacher. Let me tell you, she is not young friendly and kind. For example, at the beginning of the year we put all of our supplies in a classroom bucket and over time people stole things and the bucket was empty. So last day before break we need to color stuff and I don’t have supplies. So she Yells at me because I put it into the bucket. I mean we had to! I don’t have music until next week, but can already feel the awkwardness. I have a feeling she may treat me bad or worse than other students. Advice what to do if she does? It sounds stupid but she is pretty scary. In third grade I sang a solo along with the whole class for a grade, and everybody told me I did good but she gave me a b. I told other kids and they were like oh crap. Lol dreading next week.

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Little buddy,

Don’t worry. If you have any sort of concern, just talk to your teacher. In ANY relationship, whether it is a boyfriend girlfriend thing, or even teacher/student, communication and honesty are the most important things to honor. If she treats you bad even after you explain to her your situation, then it is her loss. Just be honest, be sincere, and mean what you say.

After my first semester of college, my advice to all the students out there would be:

-Never try to look cool, always be yourself, people will love it.
-No matter how sad you feel on any given day, just remember: It only gets better from here
-Always do your work, and then you can have fun. Not doing work made me miss a lot of opportunities. Prioritizing and getting things done is by far one of the best skills you can have going into college/work/anything after highschool.
-Never regret anything, at one point it was exactly what you wanted.
-Be independent, do the things you want because you want to
-Take chances! Fail! Succeed!

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School is supposed to be stupid and boring NOT FUN. Just do your work and listen to your teachers. Also if you want to know how to find time in school to throw once you are out of school with “recess” DON’T! It isn’t a place for that. And we all like to mess around and be stupid sometimes; do that at home or not around teachers. If your friends know you as fun and your teachers know you as a perfect student, you are good. :wink:

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Whoa, dude, way to take the fun out of school. School should definitely be a place to have fun. Anything to break up the monotony, really.

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I agree school is for fun. Just do do anything stupid, illegal(we always have cops at my school because they are smoking the green stuff), or hurtful to others. I yoyo around the halls during lunch since I started yoyoing in September. Some people say its lame but hey I don’t care I have fun and pass time. Don’t wanna fake who I am for the last 2 years of school(no college for me just UTI at best). I used to fake it and just hate myself for it.

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I played Yugioh and slaps (Egyptian Rat Screw) during lunch, all the way through high school.

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Ya it was kind of a joke. But like the other comment don’t be smoking green stuff in the bathroom. We had 4 shooting threats and 3 bomb threats last year and only 1 kid can be in the bathroom at a time because kids do drugs in there… there are messed up kids out there

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^ :o

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And I thought my high school was bad (not really).

The worst things I know of that happened at my school were:
1.I saw some kid getting arrested for something.
2.I saw some other kids getting arrested for fighting.
3.I saw a bunch of cop cars outside the school one time, dunno if it was school related or not.
4.A shooting across the street from the school (gun threats and lockdown, the works)
5.People smoking a TON of weed, and no one cares. I don’t/didn’t care either. I see nothing wrong with the stuff. I do think it’s a little inappropriate in school, but whatever.

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Lol my school must be a goody goody school then. Today someone I know (not my friend but i don’t hate her or anything.) She told one of my friends to stop trying to be better than everyone else, so my friend goes off on her at recess. She tells other people to not go to her birthday party, then that person cried on the bus. Classic case of bullying.

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My school is really good I guess, the other day I saw some high schoolers standing behind a bus (no directly) waiting for the next one and they were saying that they feel like smokers and fake caughing.

Some girl in special-ed died at my old school when she fell of off the play stucture.

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I think I might be in a different situation than a lot of people on here when it comes to school, but at the same time a very similar situation.

I’m not sure how this translates to the American system, but I’ll go ahead with my story.

The level of school I’m currently at is internationally called upper secondary school (I think), I’m on my 13th year of education and this fall, I’m likely heading into a university. In Norway, after the 10th year of education (primary school), you start having a lot more control of the subjects you are actually going to have. At this point there are two main paths (with many sub-paths) you can choose. There’s the path that is geared towards further studies/university (3 years), and then there’s the path that is geared towards employment (2 years school and 2 years as a trainee).

At this point I got the opportunity to do what I wanted to with my education. I went ahead with music studies geared towards further studies in the university. Now this path gives me “general studycompetance” which is the bottom line requirement for any further studies. I do not get some certain subjects that are geared to certain studies (like law, medicine, physics). I do, however, get to do music, something I really enjoy. I get free instrumental lessons, ear training lessons, music history, composing, conducting, PA, studiotechnology, pretty much everything. Now the most important thing is that I get to study with equally-minded people, and coming from a small place in the country I didn’t really “fit in” during my previous years of school.

There was a drawback to this choice though. I had to move out from my parents because driving 5 hours to and from school every day was no possibility (I pretty much lived as far away from any upper secondary school as possible, and the closest ones didn’t have support for music studies). This meant that I had to move out on my own a month before I turned 16. Luckily the government realize that some kids are forced to move away at this age, and there’s monetary support so that I can pay my rent. Moving away was kinda tough, and it did take some time to move from “spaghettiketchup” to real dishes.

Another thing that happened was that 60% of my schoolmates were in the same situation as me, and it was normal for most people to travel home to their parents in the weekends. Now this resulted in student parties being placed on slightly impractical weekdays (because everyone went away on Fridays), we’re talking everything from Thursdays to Mondays here. The trick was to know which weekdays you actually had time to do antyhing non-study related.

Now what I’ve come to realize is that these past three years have been amazing, mostly because everything I do with my time are things that I enjoy. School is fun, and the two-week break I had back with my family in almost complete isolate were almost painful. I’ve found that I like school too much.

I guess that if I have any advice to people, it’s to make sure that your education is an experience that you enjoy. Think of school as a mandatory social meeting with your friends, but do remember to pay attention and actually learn something. Your grades will stick with you, so they deserve having some work put into them. Try to always make the best out of your education, memories last a lifetime.

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Wow, JonasK, that’s crazy, moving out at 15. I’m 18 and I still haven’t moved out of my parents house (although college is close and I don’t really have any reason to).

Is university/college free (or payed for by the government) in Norway?

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I believe that if you study in official/public universities, it’s pretty cheap. I believe you only have to pay a small semester fee and your books. If you study in a private university, things get very expensive. Most people take out student loans anyways, student loans are interest-free as long as you are actually studying, and if you complete your studies in so called “ordinary time”, I believe you get to keep around 40% of that money.

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The problem I have with school is I can’t find a way to enjoy it. No matter how hard I try school seems boring. It’s like I’ve somehow convinced myself that I’ll never use anything I learn in school. Now, I’m a very logical/literal type of person. So when I find out that I have to spent years and years of learning stuff that I’ll forget a month later and never use again… that just seems pointless and illogical. Becasue of this I’ve come to resenting school. I still put in enough effort to get good grades, but the fact that I’m spending my life doing something I resent seem like I’m wasting my life. I feel like its taking away my creativity and free spirit. All because I’ve confined to a chair and told to “sit down and shut up”.
Now I know deep down that school is not pointless, as we know, all succesful people go to college. Like Mark Zuckerburg and Bill Gates (sarcasm).
However, When I come across certain subjects in school, I really get into it and really enjoy it. I just wish I could’ve spent my whole childhood learning those few subjects.

Another thing I dislike about school is all the drama it brings. There is this constant tension or pressure between every single kid. If you do something stupid or say something immature, then this tension grows because you know people are judging you.
The problem is teens are really stupid people. They do drugs, drink alcohol, speed in their cars, do “immoral practices” (aka, the dance with no pants), put religion completly aside, dress imodestly like they’re playing a constant strip tease to every person that lays eyes on them, getting tattos that makes them look like they have some kind of skin disease, and everything else my concious tells me not to do. If you don’t go along with it, then your “weird”. If you tell them to stop then your"socially a misfit".
It’s a never ending problem that people have to deal with. What teens don’t understand is that this little game of peer pressure is the most immature, annoying practice I’ve come across in my life. Doing drugs to be like a gangster doesn’t make you cooler, it makes you a failure, it shows your mentally unstable and you can’t make decisions for yourself. Basically, it shows your weak.

Sometimes I feel like the only thing guiding my path is my religion. As a little kid I was on the same path as everyone else. Playing games at school and learning the phrase “dont drink and drive”. I grew up in a perfect world it seemed like. Evil didn’t seem to exist.
But now, all of a sudden, evil is everywhere. Everyone is running in a different direction. The only reason I recognize anymore is because of my religion. The only reason I don’t fall into the jaws of what everyone else in school is doing is because of my religion. Whether you believe in god or not, the benefits religion provides to a person of confusion, cannot be put into words.

Advice- Don’t let other tell you what to do. If your in a free country, then be free. Hallucinating from drugs doesn’t seem like freedom to me. It’s seem like trickery. It’s all a scheme to make you buy the drugs to put money into someone else’s pocket.

Advice- Be homeschooled

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I think you need to more find things about it that you enjoy, or things that you enjoy that you can do during school. School in general is not that great of a place. It’s finding the little things that make it enjoyable each day. Good friends, a good hobby, good teachers, etc.

You’ll probably use about 20% of what you learn from teachers in real life, and about 60% of what you learn from personal experience in school. And then, depending on the electives, or classes you actually enjoy, you’ll probably retain more of that information.

Pretty much.

Don’t worry, it’s only a short part of your life.

It shouldn’t take away your creative spirit. I always found a way to be creative in school. If it was just drawing during class, or whatever. But I found, at least in my later years (Junior and Senior), at least some of my teachers started showing me a bit more respect. And I had a lot more freedom to talk and whatnot with classmates.

I completely understand this. There’s gonna be teachers you just plain hate and teachers you love. One of my original tips was to switch to a different class if you hate it. If you let your counselor/advisor know that you “feel like I’m not being taught in a way that I comprehend the best. Is there another teacher available?” chances are pretty good they’ll let you switch. For me, school was all about the teachers. If the teacher was good, I enjoyed the class well enough. Having friends in the class can also be a lot of help. So try to get a good balance of good teachers and friends in your classes. Another one of my original tips was to email your teachers, and let them know how you feel about the class. Don’t do it in a threatening way, just let them know “hey, [insert teachers name], I find myself bored and uninterested in your class, is there any advice you can give me that might help me to find it more interesting?” or something like that. Teachers have a preconcieved idea about how their teaching style affects the students, and unless the students let them know how they actually feel about it, nothing will change.

I dunno why, but I never really had drama in school. (or if I did, it was very little). I got in trouble a few times, but I’m a good kid and I learn from my mistakes. As far as drama, I’m generally more of an observer. I didn’t date at all (although I did observe countless breakups and relationship issues that could have easily been avoided), and I just kind of kept to myself. Don’t misunderstand. I was, and am, an extremely social, outgoing person, but I stayed away from as much drama as possible. I didn’t know what the ‘hot gossip’ was or anything because I didn’t care. And my friends didn’t care either. If I did something embarrassing, I laughed it off, or ignored it. I don’t care what people think. My friends were a**holes, but in more of a joking sort of way. They were cool. I think we all sort of understood we’re gonna do stupid things, and we laugh at each other, but it was never personal. And you shouldn’t take it personally from other students. I don’t know how high your self-esteem is, but confidence is a really strong quality to have in school.

I think you’re judging these people unfairly. And you really don’t have any authority to tell them how to live their lives. I think if you spent less time judging these people, and start making an effort to be more accepting of them for who they are, this wouldn’t be such an issue. I don’t think this is a school issue, though, more of a personal issue.

I don’t really believe in peer pressure. If I’m going to do something, it’s my decision, simple as that. I guess some people don’t have the willpower to make decisions for themselves, but I think we all have the ability to say yes or no, and to act the way we want to. And we don’t need PSA’s on TV to tell us this. The way I see it, being ‘cool’ is doing whatever you enjoy as long as it doesn’t harm anyone.

Again, it’s not really your place to tell them how to live their lives.

This is really good advice. I was homeschooled until 7th grade, and it was some of the best times of my life.

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thanks for the advice and actually reading my post. haha

I’m not trying to tell people how to live their lives, you are right, this is a free country. But what I was trying to get at is ‘who were my true friends’. I had a constant battle with myself over some of these issues and what I should think of people.
If someone close to me tries drugs or gets drunk, I really don’t care, its almost a natural thing to do. But if it becomes a part of their personality and/or lifestyle, then I’m kinda wondering why these people are my friends in the first place.
I try not to get into this whole 'judging" thing, I’ve learned not to give a crap about what people think of me. I yoyo in public, and if people think thats weird, well at least I’m doing something productive instead of ‘judging’ other people in a negative way.
Another point i was trying to get at is people can make the choices they want, but if they try to influence me into making those same choices… I have a problem with that. I do have enough confidence and willpower to shrug those people off. Sometimes its not easy either, especially when that ‘ever judging eye’ is criticizing you. Once again, I’ve learned to deal with that a little better.
I personally hate all this drama, but in school it surrounds us.

Advice: deal with it