School hell.

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I'm fifty year old self diag aspi. I was a clever lad (top 3 or 5) tho being among my peers was sometimes and towards the end unremitting hell. This should never be visited upon a young person.

Point is, I find it bizarre after what I went thro that here on wp there is so much visible desire to go to college/ uni. Are u all insane!! I must have had a harder time than most?

Age fourteen - sixteen was bad. I stopped talking certainly for the last year. Being bullied by the alpha female was humiliating, doused with perfume and talc. I'd like to slit her throat actually. I wish her the illest.

Being unbelievably bad at games and zero interest in football was a real handicap in 1970. It was never explained to me what the rules were or what the purpose was other than catch yet another cold stood in a freezing field in winter. How I dearly wanted to tell everyone to f**k off good and proper. I had better things to do. Weak inadaquete parents (aspi Dad perhaps) didn't help. Because of what I endured I wld never bring a child into this world. Theres more on my blog re childhood depression.

Title could be "past and present: school hell", or just "past: school hell". Why because it's about your past.

In my past I was also bullied, and it carried on some even in later years (maybe 2-3 years ago). Have you gone to college/university, you said? uni or coll?

School hell. Oh my yes, you struck a nerve there. Not for the exact reasons as yours perhaps, but what the hell, hell is hell.

Probably had an aspie dad as well. On the surface most might think that to be a good thing, it wasn't. It took a long time to finally meet. I guess we clicked in our own ways at times, but we had differences that neither of us could understand when I was young. He did well in school and I could not and I paid a price for that. It wasn't till late in life that we started some kind of bond and it never had a chance to get fully born. Not his fault nor mine either. I can still remember the tears and the trying of him and not understanding why I couldn't tell a "b" from a "d". It went on for almost a week, every night. Finally he said, "be right", it worked. But that was only part of it, no one knew the rest that came a long for that ride. I didn't either.

Mother? Domineering...umm that still might be an understatement.

It was the clever lad that got me so much into the school hell. I detest IQ tests. In ways you just cannot imagine. Talk about slitting throats, hell I'd go on a murderous rampage if I could find the people that still make them. I stupidly got talked into doing an online one the other night. Just lines I was told. My own fault, I know better. I'd probably dyslexic, maybe mildly. Try to do patterns with that. The score didn't matter, it was like instant school hell all over again. My flash backs.

Not in a very good mood am I. Count on it.

It took me a long time to figure out that 3 failed attempts at college were not failures at all. I learned something each time. And for a kid that came out of high school by the skin of his teeth. And actually failed my sub senior year. Sub senior? Yeah they made me my very own category, never did it before or since in that school. Anyway I had really failed English and didn't know it, but got a D. I was amazed, how did I do that I thought. The English teacher walked up to me in the hallway and said, do you know why I passed you? And it dawned on me, I had really gotten the F. I said no, why? Because you read. What she didn't know is I had to, the brain race wouldn't turn off, so I read till I fell asleep with a book in my hand. I did ok in college as long as I could keep the burn out away, but it always caught up to me. I never hit deans list, there was always at least one subject that just plain bored me to no end. It didn't help that I couldn't write back then either. (now I do it too much, obsession) Lol, at one school I signed up, worked out my schedule and I would have ended up with 2 two year degree's in 2 years. They had to have a f*****g conference to see if that could be done. I mean what the f**k I put it on paper for them. They had never looked at the possibility of it. I wanted to combine accounting and computers, no one had done that yet for personal computers. Very few people had them to begin with. Naw screw school, but for some it's an ok thing. I don't understand why they like it, but to each their own I guess. I have never stopped learning, I don't need school to do that.

And yeah I'm still in a bad mood.

Maybe they just want a good job later on?

Ok, I went to school in Germany. Bullying too, but not to the extend other people like you tell stories about. Maybe that's a bit different in the US? Don't know.
In my case part of the bullying was just a response on my behaving extremely arrogant. I'm smart and I can show that if I want...

Some people may be able to defend themselves. That's another point. If a kid gets bullied, there are ways out of it. That's more difficult for us non-aggressive Aspies, but possible. If I had a kid with Asperger, I would try to get him some martial art lessons. Pure self defense of course and something like TaekWonDo (sorry, not sure how you spell that correctly), where they learn the mental part as well as the physical.

There are many ways and many options, independent of the experiences some of us may have made. Giving up education because of some NTs who can't behave themselves is definitely the wrong way...

Oddly enough it wasn't the kids that did the bullying. It was the school system.

Degree? A Bachelors was a must, Masters was very common, PHD's all over the place and I had none of them. I was the one they came to in the field, after a while, for an opinion. I came in through the back door. But yeah it was a hindrance, I didn't have the PHD, I could only get to Masters level and still fit the requirements for the Governments often involved. But not having the PHD never stopped me either, I just didn't get paid for that part. Ego? You can bet on it. If I fell victim to the degree game, I would have never gotten as far as I had.

Marital arts, always an interesting subject to me. I had to learn hand to hand combat. First you kick them in the groin, rip their eyes out, it helps if you do both at the same time, and then bash them in the head with anything you can pick up and if you don't have anything, you do the head stomp. Oh and you scream and yell a lot while you're doing it, you need to make them think you're bigger than you really are. Keep it, I want nothing to do with it anymore. Want to learn how to do the rear strangle hold take down? It helps if you have a knife, but I don't need one. They never make a sound while they die, they might not die, but they'll probably never walk again. Or so I was taught, never have had to use it, I would run away first. I've always lived in livid fear that I would be put in a position where self defense would mean I would have to turn aggressive. When you are in the heat of the moment it gets pretty primal and you won't know for sure, until you get in that position. Violence is a very nasty business and I don't care what cool name you put on it. That's the real world, it's not hollywood pretty.

Yeah I've had quite the education. And I'm still in a bad mood.

i found university far better than school....less stupid, incidious, judgemental tools around...for example, in school (amongst the constant barrage of abuse) i was made fun of for NOT EATING THE CRUSTS ON MY SANDWICHES...i mean...WTF??? i don't like them! i'm not eating them! and i turn up to the pub, first day of uni, and there's a bloke sitting their with some crusts on a plate,,SOMEONE ELSE?...i remember thinking..."thank god!" (although i am in no way religious) lol x

I've been more accepted at the 3 colleges I've attended, and one that I socialized at and didn't attend, than anywhere else ever in my life. Were I not viciously attacked by my brain recently I'd be applying to the most elite doctoral schools in the country right now

I intend to work at a college just to stay in that environment. University is nothing like high school. Its also pretty easy to find people who are obsessed about your interests in school (assuming they are interests related to a field of study, club, sport or organization)

I always found it far easier in terms of school work. In high school my gpa was around 3.1. In college it was 4.0, both times.

This is my graduation picture - I admit I loved how everyone was jealous of my awards
http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh16 ... VE0025.jpg

Don't get me wrong please. I have nothing against schools, well I do, I like to see them get better, but in the sense of the later schools some people can thrive in them. My old man was most likely an aspie and thrived in it, he didn't go on to the higher schools, but they were actively trying to get him and they were prestigious schools. He did not understand why I couldn't thrive in the environment he could. I forgive him. Neither of us knew.

Commenters seem to have lost my point here, how the social difficulty I had coupled with my unusual / advanced interests cast me asa lonely and often targetted figure. Being possibly aspi I could not get the words ouit or even form thoughts of retaliation/ standing up for myself / or anything. So I just dug deeper into my hobbies - all in a little backward shithouse of an isolated north country village that I was never born into. Its not the school thats the problem - I love learning - its the s**ts that occupy the other twenty five chairs in class. I feared break times, as I did later at day release technical college.Thats why i never wld bring a child into this world - not after my experience of starting out in it. This also dictates that I remain or have to be self employed, even tho at time its difficult to survive. Fun huh? Thank God I have a substitute 'social life' by the wonferfully atmospheric places I ramble with our dog. I've been out there exploring for thirty five years. Comments please.

what kind of dog is 'our dog'. who is 'our'?

You got breaks? You did better than I did then. I was inside repeatedly recopying over and over my mistakes in the tests I had failed and there were enough to keep me inside through almost the entire 5th and 6th grades. And that was when they first introduced the so called advanced separation in grade schools. The others? I was manipulating them so well by then they were f*****g putty in my evil damn claws. Isolation in a back woods habitat, umm yeah you could could say that. Hobbies? My old man was most likely an aspie and when I had to tag along behind him on his so called hobbies. I knew more about geology, among other things, then the f*****g teachers did. The problem was it didn't fit the curriculum at the lower grades and even some of the higher grades. I day dreamed through almost all of high school, once in a while some teacher might attract my attention with a subject, but they were rare. Hell I should have been in special ed and back then it was a big black mark on whomever was in it. We didn't have short bus's back then but I belonged there and damned if it wouldn't have been a good thing if I had been. I could have aimed my dark side even better.

You do seem to indicate the hell went further than school and again we're back to base one, only this time the bully's could be avoided. But, we still stood out because of our interests and the lack of finding anyone else interested to the degree we might be in a specialized obsession and was impossible to find in this area, still the podunk area. So eventually my so called hobby went bad, I turned pro and they paid me to do it. But long before that I still had to make a go of it in the outside world and did it poorly at times. I still can manipulate the bullies. But maybe it has something to do with my little friends that have come along for the aspie ride. I think it does at times and it isn't just in this case. It can over ride some of my aspie tendencies. It cut both ways and it cut deep. You can't imagine, or maybe you can, a normal aspie tendency to get depressed at being, well just being and if the swings decided to go on the down side? We're talking many many many months of on the edge I'm going to take myself out. Thank god I learned to drink. And now I'm just as happy I don't. But it was a f*****g long time of hell on earth, not just school.

I don't think we're missing your mark as much as you may think we are. We're all different and some of us relate our lives a bit closer to others here at times.

I have a very serious dark side in my youth, one I'm not proud of at all. I didn't give a damn who the target might be, I needed to fit in right or wrong. I was in reality isolating myself even further and it felt good. Revenge of the nerd? In f*****g spades. And I had a lot of run ins with the law, later, with my coping needs.

Everybody here is so fond of picking out famous people that might be or are aspies and they tend to be role models. It's like wtf are you that damn blind to the possibilities of non role model aspies? But then again Carl Rove, among others, still might fit someones idea of a good role model. He hasn't said it, he might not be and he might not know or care to know if he is, but he sticks out about as sore as my thumb does. ( Off topic kinda and that was a bad mood but it begged to come out. )

Wander off topic? You betcha and I love that trait and I make no excuses for it any more. It's the way my words come out, even now. Get me on one of my "hobbies" and you couldn't pry me off with dynamite. Love being an aspie, now. My dark side? I made amends to those I had offended. Late, but I tried. Luckily there weren't that many and I found them. Some I didn't and they deserved what they got. I try to do it for better reasons now and hoped for outcomes, I leave the choice to them, I just try to point out a perspective shift and not take advantage of the problem itself. But I don't always do it when I see someone being a clear, cut and dry as*hole, especially bullies, I take their f*****g brain out, play with it and put it back in backwards. Gives them a new perspective on life. And I don't feel any remorse for doing it, sometimes. Naw I'm no poster boy and I still don't give a flying f**k and I often don't play well with aspies either. But mostly I do. Life can change you, it's just that a lot are still young here. They can talk to me in 50 years and we'll compare notes.

I can't comment on other countries programs, especially those in the past, but I would not associate a technical college with being college. Those programs attract the people that make high school miserable - the ones that have no intention of applying themselves and go to techinical programs because its less time in school with less work. The kind of people you are most like to run into there are the kinds of people you are least likely to run into at a university

Of course colleges are different and so you need to get a feel for a university before you apply yourself. I found youngstown state to be an excellent college for aspies and a place where it was pretty much impossible to not be accepted and not have friends. While my next college was friendly it was nothing like YSU. I considered it unfriendly in comparison - people were kind and nice but they weren't bending over backwards to invite you to hang out

College/university was just as much a joke as high school. For all that post-secondary institutions like to laud their so-called progressive policies of academic freedom, it's a total f*****g farce. If you think outside the box, you will be hammered. Period. Probably the best description I've seen of university was by the Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan. On visiting some friends at university, he made the remark: "it seemed like high school times ten."

And have you went to a university? Because the only thing I saw people getting hammered for in my uni was for refusing to think outside of the box when the point of college was to foster such thinking

Hmmmmmm, I go to uni because I love it. I absolutely didn't have bad time, except lol for grade 8 and 9. Most of them, the people who did annoy me were just not worth my time. So I ignored them. I had hundreds of friends. Still do. For me it just gets better. I would like to point out that uni is a very different place from highschool, socially and the obvious education level.

It was only as a non student did the people at the University's work for me, as far as relating and getting things done.

Would it have happened while I was at Penn State? I don't know, I was too busy trying to handle the load that was the boring me to death, school load as well as my own. I tested high in the areas that really were me (Archaeology, Computers, etc.) and that should have been the clue to follow my heart. But they kept pounding me with things that just didn't fuel my obsessions. Or spark what lay just under my surface. I came out of Penn State with a solid High School knowledge, math and English included, but on a resume it doesn't appear as it really is. It just says I was there. The other college attempts? I learned a few things so they weren't failures, but again the basics before the real fuel weren't there. None of them challenged me. The basics would have filled in later as they would have presented themselves, but I could have done them a bit better had I the fuel to begin with, it would have been a need to add more fuel. It's like schools are backwards to me. When I look at them now, it's like ok that one I'm doing and it would be cool to do it there, only to find out the damn thing is Masters level work.

As the non student later I picked them out, the teachers and I taught them and they taught me. While in that environment I had no homework on the common conception, I assigned my own and did it with no grading system. I came out of it with honors, they kept calling me back, they still wanted my take on certian things. This happen on a lesser scale before this, and I even was given a budget on a few, including the Uni's. I left that environment and went pro and again I picked out the ones that were the mavericks in charge and again the PHD's listened and we taught each other, only this time they paid me to do it. It was only fair, they just didn't pay me enough to do what I was, but it didn't matter, because it was an obsession I had been doing for a very long time for free. My only regret is I didn't follow my heart earlier. I also met my Wife, a non aspie, and she had to hit me over the head with a damn hammer because I was so into the obsession. Her training is Anthropology and I always said it would take one to live with me and I was right. Where there is the will, there is the way. Schools just don't work very well for me if I come in the front door. We're all different and for some they work just fine.

The Smashing Pumpkins, great music. I stim on them a lot. No wonder.