Post-secondary or grade school.
I loved math and was good at it until we got to integrals. I could do algebra, geometry, trigonometry, probability, and derivates…and loved all of them. But my brain went splat against integrals.
I barely passed Calculus levels 3 and 4. Honestly, I should have failed them. The professor wasn’t very good, he knew this, and he took pity on me. But it was ultimately my own fault.
It was kind of humiliating. I’d always done really well at math, and even tutored other students. Then I just hit a fucking wall with integrals. At that point, I fully understood how other students who struggled with math had felt all along. I had been empathetic to them. But now I suddenly knew what it was like.
I sometimes wonder if a virus or some other unknown medical situation broke that part of my brain. It kind of felt like it. Or maybe it was just beyond my natural abilities, period.
I never understood integrals either! I don’t know if we covered it in a math class in high school but I got to college and took physics and encountered it. I was like “What in the fuck is this shit?!” I take that back. I think I did encounter it briefly in high school physics but the teacher was like, “don’t worry if you don’t get it right now, you’ll figure it out.” My fucking ass! That was college physics from like week 2!!!
I tried to figure it out from the text book and that didn’t work. I went and bought a math book to try to figure it out, that obviously didn’t work. This was before YouTube and the internet getting big on any kind of instruction so it was just like," well fuck me I guess I’ll fail."
What I should have done was gone to the teacher for help. They always said their hours when they were open but I never thought they would have time for me. I know better now. They would have been happy to help me but ignorance and probably low self esteem and all.
Still don’t understand that integral shit. I eventually went back to school but become an English major instead of that shit.
I hate it, because I like reading and watching videos about physics…but when they throw formulas up there I can’t read them. I can read music. I can read code. But I can’t read advanced math.
Undiagnosed ADHD until I was almost 30.
Something similar, I’ve had sleep issues since I was young, wasn’t until I was 40 that I was diagnosed with insomnia disorder. Middle school is when it really took over, and I didn’t make it any further than grade 10. I got my GED at 25 and was admited to University as a mature student. These days I’m on a disability pension.
Not day dreaming or doodling in class, and doing homework.
Literature Review. God, scientific papers are so bloody dull to read.
Grade 12. Absolute waste of time. Like… “I taught myself HTML/JS/CSS, instead of listening” levels of a waste of time.
Everything felt like they didn’t last nearly as long as they could’ve. You were shuffled a lot during a school day and you had so much crammed in to do within those 8 hours that you’re there.
I never liked school for the courses and all that. I liked school because of who I hung around and some of the memories I got through them.
Adhd didn’t exist back then.
Waking up early. Also the harest part of my work - trying to complete complex work while I can barely stay awake.
Having undiagnosed autism and parents not believing in it. I fucking hated school
I was diagnosed a few months after school ended. Same year as well. Parent still refused to believe it.
I was diagnosed a decade after I graduated and was married. My wife suggested for me to go since she saw the signs.
Sounds like you have a caring wife, I’m happy to read this.
I grew up in a time when autism was diagnosable, but only if you were in the extreme end of the spectrum. I don’t even know if Asperger’s was a thing.
Many, many days of my adult life I’ve wondered if I’m on the (lighter) end of the spectrum. There’s still at least a two year waiting period to find out. So many “clues” I can point to from my childhood, but they could also just be coincidences.
Any writing. Grammar, punctuation, and spelling were always easy, but I never knew what to write.
Also, I often skipped homework and believe that I was right to do so. Even though I’ve been out of school since 2008 and have no children, I still maintain that the school has zero right to assign anything to be done outside of school.
Art and music class in middle school. Literally useless. Fortunately, we no longer do such useless classes in high school. I pretty much lived my life through middle school without friends, so I hated the art class even more because we sometimes got grouped together to make some “art”.
Hardest class - teacher straight up lied to us and failed 80% of the class on a test. Did it again next test. Didn’t give the slightest shit about any of us Dr Richard lastname, you were truly a Dick. It’s been 20 years and I still hate you.
Hardest thing - finding a job. School did not teach me how to actually find a job. Just told to network. What does that mean? It means network. Fucking hated them.
The pledge of allegiance in US schools
Getting out of bed.
I hated school as a kid and went back as an adult. The experience is a whole other level and actually really nice.
