my calculus teacher did little senior year jokey biographies of people as a big powerpoint on the last day. he was well loved, venerable, yet also slightly … odd. sharp, but vaguely weird. he separated people into basically informal friend groups [with multiple people on the same slide] and people who were the sort of weird alone people. i was one of the alone people. and he said i slept all the time for some reason, i was very sleep deprived but very anxious.
i was sleep deprived all of school really, it started so fucking early, terribly unfair to anybody’s sleep schedule
upon typing this I suppose it isn’t the Worst but it’s still not a fun way to end
Some highlights as to why I hated school.
I’m Native American, first grade teacher continually harassed me about my long hair, saying it wasn’t appropriate for a boy to have long hair. She demanded I cut it. And when I came to class with it still long she attempted to cut it herself. Same thing happened in 4th grade, different teacher. But her T.A. intervened and defended me.
Middle school art teacher scolded me for completing an art project early. She proceeded to smash my art and demand I do it over. I had to pay for the supplies.
Middle school, I was frequently pulled out of my homeroom class for a “study group”. This group was literally all the Native Americans in the school (all grades). We’d sit in detention hall and do nothing for the duration of the class. When I tried to complain and draw attention to the situation. The school defended it to my parents by saying I was falling behind in homeroom (the class they kept taking me out of). After being assigned a tutor I mentioned what was happening to him. The group stopped meeting and my tutor was reassigned. I still don’t know if it was a malicious act, but it was very disturbing to be locked in a room in the back of the school with the only other Native Americans.
Highschool, a math teacher continually accused me of cheating on tests, because someone like me doesn’t magically do well on tests. School administration got involved and I had to redo some tests in front of them. Got the same grade. He insisted I was still somehow cheating. A different math teacher came to my defense saying he had been trying to get me to join the math team, since I had an untapped talent for math. I didnt bother with coursework and would focus on tests to pass. I really fucked the bell curve in that class. Never did join the math team.