ultimately i’m grateful for the friends i made in the class I ended up in. there were still bright kids in class who it was really fun to hang out with, and a statistically unusual number of my classmates have gotten phds or gone on to pretty deep research…
-
Show this thread
-
and probably (surely??) just plunking me directly into the 11th grade would have been hilariously suboptimal. can you imagine? it has been done though, i guess. school was fine as long as i could do whatever i wanted, so long as the work got done. i’d be reading or drawing…
3 replies 1 retweet 254 likesShow this thread -
or talking, quietly, with one of my friends, one of the cleverer or funnier people in class. at one point i was drawing up, kind of, machine geometries for imagined fusion reactors. there was a spelling test and they were like “spelling test” and i said “can’t you see i’m busy”
4 replies 2 retweets 238 likesShow this thread -
they let me get away with it. and the class kept going in jr high, it was not good. the social scene blew up / collapsed as people moved away and new schools merged, and i had a punitive teacher who really hated being corrected or asked questions. she kept giving me detention…
3 replies 2 retweets 220 likesShow this thread -
actually it wasn’t just me. she had tenure, and she was infamous. she would give so much detention that the detention population would exceed her home room population. she would give detention to people in the hallway walking to class.
3 replies 2 retweets 181 likesShow this thread -
anyway, after the nth time this happened, i was like, this is bullshit, i’m locked in here, but i wonder if the doors are actually physically unlocked. so i waited till she was distracted and then slipped out, and checked the doors. they were unlocked! i bolted, hid behind a tree
5 replies 1 retweet 194 likesShow this thread -
and then walked home. my parents, ex world traveling hippies, did not send me back. they decided i didn’t have to, i was ahead a year anyway, and that i was just going to school for recess (for friends, essentially), anyway, a function it no longer provided
1 reply 2 retweets 222 likesShow this thread -
at some point we found out that the tests they had been hiding from a couple weeks before i quit said i was in the 99.97th percentile as scored for uni entrants, or whatever, so we were like, huh, maybe i should just go to university i was too young for the GED, but not the SAT!
2 replies 2 retweets 199 likesShow this thread -
before that, school was books, essays, horseback riding, 3d modeling and programming class at the community college. and lots of videogames; even making some with map editors and engines, little things
4 replies 1 retweet 173 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @DanielleFong
sports teams helped me cooperate with people along with taking college courses where other students respected & fed my young brain so I wouldn't feel bored. Schools had little capacity for advancement, most plop gifted people on computers but give no context for lifelong learning
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
totally agree about sports! I also came to it a little late, but music and drama were awesome activities. i especially liked improv, and improv music
-
-
Replying to @DanielleFong
improv is huge for building confidence as a kid -- any performance art, but especially improv helps build flexibility and the ability to speak with a wide variety of people off the cuff. Hugely helpful skills to develop young, in camp or after school, in clubs or theatre programs
0 replies 0 retweets 1 likeThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
