Published on 12, July, 2020
Did anyone else find school too easy? What would you do to challenge yourself? I would do projects on countries/inventors/planets. I would write stories at home and make lists of the most populous countries on earth or the countries with the most land mass.
Academically easy for me, but socially a nightmare. The things I really needed to know weren't taught, it seems you were just expected to know how to do them. :(
Hi yes I agree with you the work was easy, but the things the other children found easy, I struggled with such as interacting and playing. I needed lessons in this rather than normal lessons.
This has dogged me throughout life too. And so it's perfeectly possible to have a couple of degrees, a professional qualification, loads of experience but still be terrified of other people so that it becomes very draining to deal with office politics, group meetings, socialising etc. The "normal" lessons were usually easy. The format was:- Here's the information, here are some examples of how to do this, here are some similar examples for you to work through. To me this almost followed the formula of, "Here's the answer. Now here's the question." Unlike real life which throws random events at you for which you are often completely unprepared.
My accountancy "career" is a good example. All of the exams drew from the same course materials and, if scenarios were involved, all of the information was provided. Cool! 10/10 every time! But the typical real life example would be, say, assigning me to implement a new financial system involving co-ordination between several departments and staff plus liaising with external consultant and having a clear idea of the end results required by each user - i.e. lots of communication involved, plus deadlines and others observing my progress. And.... she seemed to be in good form at interview, she knew her stuff, she has the qualifications but, oh, she's in trouble, she's faltering, she looks unsteady and... she's down at the first hurdle! So the old joke about what you say to the school geek 20 years later isn't, in my case, "Yes boss!" It's more like, "Oh! I'm so sorry! Whaton earth happened to you?"
Yes, I also have a chronic health condition which I think has been very much exacerbated by work-related stress, particularly as a result of powering through.
In the same spirit as my various attempts to desensitise myself by forcing myself to keep facing situations I wasn't coping with very well, I also kept looking for ways of overcoming what I saw as temporary issues (largely to do with nerves and anxiety around performing in front of others). None of it could actually be overcome, at least not as I'd hoped, but I expended a lot of energy that way. The corporate world is not for me. But I had to find out the hard way.
Jenny Butterfly said:So the old joke about what you say to the school geek 20 years later isn't, in my case, "Yes boss!" It's more like, "Oh! I'm so sorry! Whaton earth happened to you?"
I'm the same - but I stupidly 'powered through' all of the stress until my body decided to take control and put the brakes on for me. I became seriously ill about 20 years ago and it stopped me going any further.
Unfortunately, it left me so ill that I wouldn't be able to change jobs because I couldn't guarantee 2 years of good health at the new company - and the old company paid me too much money to walk away - so I was stuck in the high stress situation with no possible escape route.