Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm just watching this Yo Samdy Sam video and already noticing (in spite of her posh, private school education - privilege alert!) that many of the teachers' observations are almost exaclty the same as on my own. Almost eerily, in fact, although I went to a very rough comprehensive in the North East of England. My reports were, on the face of it, rather good, but there are some little asides which indicate constant high levels of anxiety combined with my supposed "giftedness" (I was actually terrified into appearing "gifted", I now think). When I look back, I'm getting more of a feeling of, "My goodness - what did they do to me?" Very interesting, I think, And I'll probably reflect some more on this as I watch the rest. My "giftedness" didn't exactly carry over into most of the workplaces I got myself trapped in and I then experienced decades of anxiety and fairly poor mental health. So... and if you care to share, how was it for you? www.youtube.com/watch
Hard working, good grades, good all-rounder (except PE), quiet, needs to participate more. That was pretty much every school report I got. I can't remember if I was explicitly told that I needed more friends.
In retrospect, I wonder how I managed going to a very big (1,500 pupils) secondary school, involving a long commute on buses and Tube every day, not to mention bullies, but I had a mini-burnout in the Sixth Form and a bigger one at university, so the answer is probably that I <i>didn't</i> manage it, I just postponed the collapse.
Luftmentsch said:I just postponed the collapse.
I come across this kind of experience a lot and certainly went through it myself. The sad result has been that, even when I didn't collapse, there was that constant feeling of living on the edge. And it would only have taken schools and educators to consider the whole person, drill down into the reasons behind the lack of participation and give reasonable support. Sigh...