I failed a lot and had a hard time understanding class lessons or what to do. I tried university and got put on academic suspension to. I am not good at school and want to know if anyone else had this.
If you were or are good at school I still think it will be fun to read why this is. What made school not very hard if you were good at it?
This is my experience, except I coasted getting almost perfect grades without really trying until 21 when I was in my 4th year of university. I was terribly burnt out by that point and dropped out 3 times. It took my 5 more years to get through my last 1 year of classes and my grades dropped 1-2 letter grades even doing part time. I used to love school and leaning, but I just feel like I don't have the energy and am less interested in it now.
I was also really "mature" (sometimes I think this just meant weird) until about that age. All my friends were older than me. Now I'm 30 and everyone thinks I'm younger than I am. So I understand the "born a certain age" thing. My peers were behind me for a long time and are now way ahead!
I was also really "mature" (sometimes I think this just meant weird) until about that age. All my friends were older than me. Now I'm 30 and everyone thinks I'm younger than I am. So I understand the "born a certain age" thing. My peers were behind me for a long time and are now way ahead!
ah being born a certain age! perfectly said! not only was it the intelligence but i still feel younger in other aspects. i don’t know if this is just me but since 13/14, the “age i was born”, it now takes me years to mentally feel a year older. once i turned 14 i felt 14 for five years. i am turning 20 soon and only recently felt like i aged to 15😅
This is almost exactly my life story, when I was 14 I started drinking heavily to cope with the stress and eventually attempted suicide twice, leading to me going into a mental health ward, going into a children’s home after that, and dropping out of school because flat out nobody could make me go, I was terrified to go back. So I didn’t attend year 11 (the final exams year) and had to take some crucial exams in a “special needs” sixth form.
When I was a child of like 8 years old they were giving me school work for 13 year olds, everybody thought I’d turn out to be Einstein. I finished school with a B- in math and a D in biology, nothing else. I’m going to be working part time from home for a non profit organisation for the rest of my life because that’s all I can really get and all I can even handle, yet everyone was convinced I was going to big places lmao. Oh what could’ve been if it wasn’t for burnout, it permanently ruined my brain :(
oh i relate so heavily. i was also given work for grades above and i am so sure everyone had big expectations of where i was going. i dropped out in 9th grade and haven’t pursued any type of education since. i am terrified of running into old teachers and classmates and them asking what im up to now. im always thinking about what i could have been if i hadnt burnt out. its so hard, sending hugs ❤️🩹
I was bad at school as a child/teenager. For me, it was due to the lack of autonomy, flexibility, and social support. Add onto that crippling poverty and living in a very judgement community (bible-belt). There were just too many factors outside my control for me to be successful.
I excelled in college. I graduated top of my class. I was a non-tradition student (enrolled at 25), so I was much more self aware about what I could handle at that point. I was in control of what classes to take, who to take them with, and when to take them. I was financially secure, which was a huge stress relief. I moved to one of the most liberal city in the US. I also majored in a STEM field (engineering), so most of my peers were ND. For the first time in my life, I fit in socially.
I was really good at school until Junior year and started experiencing major burn out. Still tried to go to college and work and had a mental break down. I’m good at school in the academic sense but the executive dysfunction is strong
I was terrible in elementary and high school. I remember being really embarrassed when I came across some of my old school work and how many questions I got wrong and how awful my marks were. I remember being bullied about my grades by other students. Why I had such a hard time, I'm not entirely sure, I just remember being so overwhelmed and not being able to process the information in class. It also felt like I was just really checked out a lot of the time, in my own world.
It took until university (in my thirties, a STEM program) to realize that I learn differently and need to understand all the details making up whatever I'm doing before I can understand what to do with it. I also get really hung up on wording and if a question or assignment isn't clear enough, I won't be able to do anything because I can interpret the same question in multiple ways, then I have to try and think of what the instructor is likely expecting and would most likely be intending to ask and so on (I would ask of course, but there seems to be a limit to how many questions you can ask before they assume you're trying to get an unfair advantage or think you haven't thought it through already). I asked a lot of questions, and a lot of it seemed to hinge on being able to interpret the same thing different ways, which it seems most other students just assume their first interpretation is the correct one and didn't think about it further, just diving into the work straight away. Whenever I was in a new class with students I hadn't met before, it definitely seemed like they thought I was stupid based on my questions and what I would get stuck on, they would even avoid being grouped with me, but I guess eventually my questions and the instructor's answers proved they didn't understand like they thought they did, and many started asking me for help with their work.
I also did my work a lot slower, I had to thoroughly understand the calculations and steps instead of just following an example blindly or assuming a particular method was the "obvious" choice instead of thinking it through more carefully. Other students would be on question 10 and I'd be stuck on question 1, wondering how the hell everyone else understands but I don't. But ultimately, I was usually getting the highest marks. I graduated with distinction, held honour roll the entire time. Burned myself the fuck out in the process, but I proved to myself that I can do it.
My path was truly similar. Nice to read you :)
This is very much like my life! I was considered stupid because I was slow and needed to know the context of things, the meanings of the different parts before I could understand something. I would ask questions that would annot my teachers and I got a reputation for being dull, when in reality I didn't take anything at face value. I never have and I'm glad that I still don't, it makes life a lot more interesting. Needless to say I didn't get good grades at school, though they weren't always awful, they weren't consistently good either.
However when I went to uni (I did fine art) we were expected to use abstract thinking, I was already very accustomed to thinking in this way, and I understood a lot of the philosophies that informed art, as well as being able to make connections between subjects. Like you, I would see multiple interpretations of problems, at school if you were given a maths question then you had to answer it one way. I would find alternative ways to answer it and even if it was right i would still fail by the fact i used an unusual method.
As usual the other students thought I was stupid and annoying at first, but the more they started being pushed to think abstractly (and saw that I impressed the lecturers) the more this turned out to be undeveloped in them. I noticed that it was actually frightening to them, because they still felt like if they didn't answer the way the lecturers expected then they would be humiliated. The lecturers didn't expect a 'right' answer, but a different answer. The students started to ask me questions and discuss their ideas with me, I didn't really mind if they took the ideas, it was kind of refreshing to be the smart one whne I'd always been the one everyone thought was stupid. I knew how it felt to be overwhelmed and confused. I even got adopted by the pretentious assholes which was funny.
yes. i started off very smart (bc i enjoyed reading MY books and doing math) and then quickly became a failure due to being forced to do subjects i didnt care for. once i got to uni and chose my own subjects i went back to being rlly smart lol
Maths was so hard. I often just didn't do it because the numbers practically jumbled up on my page
Dyscalculia is a pain in the ass
I was “gifted.” The school work was always easy for me. Everything else sucked. Other than the obvious social and sensory aspects, the worst part was probably how often I pissed teachers off by correcting them. Oh, and a sadistic middle school gym coach who led me to having panic attacks on any gym day.
By 16, I was having a panic attack at school every day. I just got used to it. But it wasn’t fun.
Kind of.
My grades are great, but after 10-11 years I stopped paiyng atention, being in school all day and learning almost nothing from it.
My best friend group was my savior
High school was a really rough time for me. I experienced personal things and the school was not so great at supporting my needs so eventually I got burnt out and dropped out the middle of my last year of high school.
I almost didn’t graduate high school because I’d been such a poor student.
I now realize I have auditory processing disorder, audhd, and dyscalculia.
I excelled in college and grad school.
I was terrible at learning but somehow I did pretty good with grades and got As and Bs.
I was great at school until I reached adolescence. I always tested really well, though, even after my grades fell (due to not doing homework, refusing to work on group projects, etc.). I'm smart, I just don't like jumping through their pointless hoops.
If you mean in terms of grades, I was great until around 4th grade. Some traumatic stuff was going on around then and I realized school wasn’t the most important thing in my life so I stopped caring. My grades from then to high school were decent, not bad, but not great I guess. I never studied or applied myself, just got a decent grade to get it over with. I was “bad” at math (later learned it wasn’t me but the teaching. I love math now.) but consistently excelled in other classes if I could care enough. I had a bit of a slump in the latter part of high school due to some mental health issues though. Then in college, totally different story. 4.0 the whole way for some reason. Idk why but I found it way easier to actually care and stay engaged without feeling as overwhelmed.
Yes I had meltdowns in grade school and got separated from the other kids often, everyone thought I was weird and my grades were barely good enough to pass and I think some teachers only passed me because they felt bad for me
Yeah, I also always pretty much sucked at school. Always had hard times understanding instructions or questions, my memory was awful (still is), sometimes it felt like my brain was just unable to understand some concepts, or like it was just awfully slow at processing information. Usually I had to study twice or thrice as hard as others, just to end up with mediocre grades :/ even in subjects I was actually interested and enjoyed...
Same. I am terrible at it. I also have dyslexia so everything was very hard that way too. Learning to write took me years. I wasn't fully able to for some years past my peers. Still not brilliant at it...
I'm trying to learn to drive atm and that is a big big fail. Its just not something I'm able to. I was homeschooled eventually and that was the only thing that helped me some what but the way schools teach did nothing for me. Also unless it's my special interests I think I have a very hard time retaining any of the information.
Yes, despite trying hard resaults were weak. With except of fev narrow sub-topics where I exceled.
Plot twist: now I strongly concider purchaseing academia-related carieer.
i excelled in school. just memorized study guides and notes. passed the tests! had a 3.8 unweighted GPA
I was mostly good at grade school, but college / university I was terrible at.
The big reason? Grade composition. In grade school, 80% of your final grade was based on homework, 10% on tests, and 10% on "class participation" which I always got full marks in because "participating" counted things like remembering to bring your binder, or taking notes during class, not raising your hand and talking.
Anyway, I rock at homework, and suck at tests. But even if I got a 0 on every test, I would still have an A in class from full marks on everything else. That being said I didn't often get zeroes - grade school tests were easy (mostly spelling tests, or knowledge from a book I had already read 10 times out of boredom) and so sometimes I got high marks there too.
That changed in college, where suddenly 90% of the final grade was based on your test scores, and 10% on homework. I still excelled at homework in every class and would pull high marks there...but I was fully, 100% failing tests. I would get maybe - maybe - 20% if I was lucky, still an F. So overnight I went from top of class with scholarship in hand to complete and utter failure that was extremely close to flunking out of school, when literally nothing had changed about the way I studied or prepared. I lost my scholarship within the first year, was on academic probation by my second year, and was going out of my mind trying to figure out how to do well enough on tests to score the bare minimum "passing" final grade of a C.
I attended therapy for "test anxiety", but that didn't help (probably because it was actually autism, haha). In the end the only way I passed classes was because I found a wonderful professor who recognized that I was smart but just couldn't pass tests, and he let me use notes during the tests (I majored in computer science, so I was being tested on my ability to logic my way through a problem, not knowledge I could memorize). I had to stay in college several extra years waiting for him to be assigned as the professor for all the classes I needed, but it was totally worth it. For the classes he couldn't teach, like the ones in a different subject, I usually ended up taking them all twice - these teachers never changed their tests, so I memorized the correct answers from the previous semester's tests ahead of time and was able to score high enough to pass that way. Or, I would go take the class online where I could take the tests with notes because they had no way of knowing (this was the early days of online learning, these days more formal measures are taken to prevent this).
You could not pay me to get back in a traditional classroom at this point. College was a torture I really had not been expecting to have trouble with, and it's tainted how I feel about traditional education.
Academically, I did well. Didn't need to learn to much, and it was of some solace since everything else in my life was abysmal. I had a short burst of burnout at 14, and paused from 18-20, after which I managed graduating school. Since then I've been dead to the world (except for my parents. Who never got tired of telling me better things would come, and everyone struggles the same, with a general taste of "suck it up", and who now blame me for my crippling inability to help myself).
Was gifted at certain subjects and abysmal at other ones. I was amazing in english, foreign languages (chinese and french), and history, but absolutely terrible in math and science. I mean on the verge of failing terrible. I guess i am more of a right brained person
I was bad at math and anything related. My English was great. Anytime I took those state tests, my math scores were always low, but my English scores were always very high. I tried to do chemistry in high school, but I was failing. It was suggested I take a different science class instead.
My reading level was higher than my age as well, but that doesn't matter once you leave high school.
Anytime I looked at my GPA, I was always mad because math would bring it down. When I was in community college, my GPA was great because I didn't always take a math class. I went from a 2.3 to at least a 3.0. I had straight As without math, it's annoying how much people care so much about math.
STEM is good and all, but not everyone is STEM smart. I'm not.
I wasn't actually bad I was difficult to handle. I'd get in trouble for fighting because I'd tell the teachers and they wouldn't do anything, so I'd show the bullies how it felt to be bullied. I was also a pedant so would correct teachers spelling ect. I probably have ADHD as I rarely ever remembered to do homework at home but would get top 10% in everything except humanities(because that meant a yearly project that if only remember about when they reminded us the week before it was due).
Very much felt everyone else was stupid because they couldn't just "remember". Was reading Ben Elton and Stephen Fry at 12 so argued when I was put in bottom set English (those kids couldn't read textbooks nvm shakespeare). Their response was we'll move you up a set when you speak up in class. This is my education experience in a nutshell, low expectations that they didn't want me to surpass. Add in being black and northern and I realise ALL of my teachers were biased. The ones who stayed at least.
I was so bad at school till I started art college because the way of teaching there was less academic. But then when I went to university I got kicked out because it was really academic and it was very strict and you couldn’t really express yourself. So after that I started a minimum wage job and I was like shit I really don’t want to fucking do this for the rest of my life so it forced me to get my shit together and it made me realise i didn’t have a choice in being bad at school. So I went back to uni and went to a more selective one like with small classes and I found it much easier. I think it really depends on the way you’re taught, for me there has to be a lot of 1 on 1 for me to be able to do it. Also having friends on your course so you can push eachother.
Math killed me. I was exceedingly good in English, and great with anything animal and science based, but I SUCKED with math. I tried for a while, but once algebra showed up, I was done trying.
Oh, and I was homeschooled, so I simply snuck the workbooks when my mom wasn’t paying attention and copied most of the answers so I could “pass” well enough to keep her off my back. I just barely made passing grades in the state mandated tests(regularly making 90’s in everything else, but 40’s in math), and never looked back once I graduated. 😅💀
I didn’t actually learn how to find the average of numbers until recently, and I still can’t do long division. I just hope I never need it. Numbers justmean nothing to me. I have to picture solid objects(eg: rows of cookies) in order to add and subtract. I don’t think I’m stupid, I know I can learn it if I try, but it takes so much exhausting effort to do that it doesn’t feel worth it.
I considered myself a bad student. I was in remedial maths and advanced sciences and English. If I didn't like it I wasn't going to excel in it. I was in band (marching and concert) and showchior. I had thousands of dollars in scholarships and a full ride to the local community College. The thought of college made me want to vomit. I've never been interested in going and my family hates me for "wasting" my potential. I've worked several different jobs from. Fast food to office management and then sales. I do not regret not going back to school. Not even a little. I get burned out so fast I don't think I would be able to stick with one type of career for my whole life. And even if I had gone to school for what I wanted at the time I would have had to move several states away to even use my degree. That's not something I was or am willing to do. So I'm cool with what I have going on now. Even if I don't make the best money and I have an over stimulating job in sales. I'm "happy"
School was hard for me because I was so different from everyone else and we all knew it. Just didn't know why (late daignosis) I didn't have any friends until I was 14 and my grades were terrible until highschool. I was always more mature than anyone else and I was just a chill kid so that already made me stick out be cause I was called "goth" because of my attitude. Which didn't bother me because I do like that style.
i was a “gifted child” and was always quite a bit smarter than my peers until 13/14. i suddenly had no motivation, no ability to learn or absorb new material, i just couldn’t do it i struggled with my work so much. i now realise this was me burning out
in a way i almost feel like i was born with the intelligence of a 13 year old, which made school super easy for me the years leading up to it. once i reached 13 suddenly school didn’t come naturally to me anymore. i had to try and put in effort to learn new things which i hadn’t done before, but this is what everyone else around me had already been doing for years.
im curious to know if anyone else feels this way