Exclusion/humiliation at school

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Whether you're currently in school or graduated decades ago, chances are anyone on this discussion board has stories of social exclusion/humiliation.

I figured I'd start a thread where we can all share our stories.

Here's a story of mine: When I was in high school, I was in a group picture at homecoming. When the picture got posted on facebook, the classmate posting it cropped me out (he left everyone but me in the picture).

Was that an oversight or purposeful bullying?

Seeing as cropping the picture took extra effort on his part (as opposed to if he uploaded the picture as is), I'd call his actions deliberate.

Plus, I find it highly unlikely he just so happened to crop out "the strange kid" by accident.

My entire history was "accidentally" left out of my high-school yearbook, leaving only my picture and my name.

High school just sucks.

The best thing to do is to move on from it.

Really.

I know from experience.

I was excluded, humiliated, all that jazz all through high school. But I said to myself----forget all this BS, get a job, move from your mother's house, and you'll be okay.

By and large, I did all right while being able to realize that high school is just a lousy phase in one's life.

OK that's quite bad then.
I had friends thankfully but there were also people there who were 'challenging'

Are we going to have a contest to see who had it worse?

A contest is, IMO, extremely unproductive. The tribulations we've been through are not meant to be a contest. I started this thread as more of a support group.

I once had a kid put glass in the holes of a bowling ball I was about to use.

That's pretty bad.
I just lived under a feeling of oppression for the first three years. Then from 14-16 it subsided. Then when I left school at 16 i had a couple of big celebrations...

Sixth form college came after that, the only problems there were snobbery and exclusion

Last edited by klanka on 22 Aug 2022, 9:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was stupid enough to write a short story of a sexual nature when I was a sophomore (second year of secondary school) in high school. This caused almost four years of bullying.

At least, in the working world, it wasn't known that I concocted that story-----I got a new lease on life once I graduated high school. I learned my lessons fairly well.

Oh yes any thing you say or do can be made into a nickname. So I also learnt discretion around that time.

Awrightie, then . . .

I can think back and review my public school "career" as 13 years of Hell, yet without reliving the bad feelings.  It was bad enough when fellow students would beat me up, but when the teachers would ridicule me in class for getting beat up ("You must have asked for it", "Stop being a crybaby", "Nobody likes a tattle-tail", et cetera), that really made it awful.  I even stopped telling my parents, because nothing ever changed when I did.

Since I was outnumbered and had no support, I started retaliating in secret.  Trapping small lizards and field mice, and then releasing them in the cafeteria was one of my favorites (they were in my lunchbox; my lunch was in my pockets).  Mixing chemicals to produce hydrogen sulfide and then dumping them in a hallway waste-bin was another.  Sneaking into the steam-tunnels during a school dance and re-wiring the intercom system was also gratifying.  I got away with all of it because no one ever paid attention to the outcasts.

Nowadays, pulling that kind of crap would have put me in juvie hall for sure.

When I was in middle school, one or more classmates would tamper with my woodworking project in shop class. I never caught who was doing it (but I have a pretty good guess of who).

Luckily the class was pass/fail. And at the end of the school year, my project was at least presentable (despite the bully's best attempts to ruin my project), although not great.

On the last day of school, when we were taking our projects home, I managed to snatch a classmate's project without her noticing. I'm confident she wasn't the one messing with my woodwork (so it's unfortunate I stole from her). But her project just so happened to be the easiest one to steal.

The woodworking project was meant to be a father's day gift to the students' dads. I wanted to give my dad a nice gift. To this day, my parents have no idea about the true story of my woodworking class.

I remember constantly being told that nothing would be done about physical bullying I was subjected to or mocked/belittled/humiliated by authorities when I would finally ask for intervention. At times they'd even suggest that physical bullying they witnessed on a daily basis wasn't their problem, I'd have to deal with it myself, but also, there's a zero-tolerance policy for fighting.

Finally I started warning that if they continued to fail me I was just going to retaliate, that I was going to start making examples of people and that any intervention or attempts to punish me afterwards would be treated as bullying and earn a response.

I was lucky though in that the principal had been my VP when I started and that I got along with two of the three VPs. There was one who really liked to target me in regards to dress code, but once I realized she was just a much older bully my method of dealing with her changed. I got pulled in, she closed the door, immediately lost control of the situation and I told her if we ever had to speak in that office again I'd deal with her like some of the other bullies, gave her a big wink, a finger gun and walked out. There was one impotent attempt after that and she caught a hand for it (before I had realized who it was, I just didn't flinch or become apologetic when I realized).

It's funny, because for the first two years I just kept my head down and tried to avoid trouble, I tried using authorities, I tried using threats, I tried using diplomacy, I tried using kindness but once all that was left in my toolbag was a hammer suddenly all my problems became nails... but they always ended up curled up and bent over.

I'm not saying school shootings are the answer (and in no way is my post encouraging/supporting school shootings). But it's no surprise school shootings became a thing right around the time schools stopped addressing bullying.

When bullying victims are totally disempowered, what do schools expect?

Edit: Rather than saying "right around the time schools stopped addressing bullying," I should have said "right around the time schools adopted zero tolerance policies for fighting back."

Based on some of the posters a lot older than us, even in their day, schools wouldn't address bullying. BUT at least the victim was permitted to fight back.