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Day 14 - My Education
This is a bit of a sore subject for me, so I'll be brief. I was the honor student everyone hated in high school, though I didn't ever really apply myself as hard as I could have so I wasn't valedictorian either. Still, I graduated in the top 20 of my high school, which was an accomplishment considering quite a few ahead of me went on to Ivy League or close-to-Ivy-League schools. Me, I went to the University of South Carolina (which is actually an excellent school) and dropped out after three years, never even maintaining C average. Then I went off to Maine and got knocked up (yes, I am being a bit facetious here, though I did get pregnant obviously).
Shit happened in my life around my junior and senior years of high school. My home life was beyond stressful, school had always been sheer hell thanks to my peers, and then right out of high school I was dating an asshole and sincerely believed I could do no better. Things got worse after I went to college, and pretty much, I mentally fell apart. A decade-plus removed from the situation, I can look back on it and be amazed that I held it together for as long as I did and also wonder why no one in my life, teachers or family, thought to question why it is that someone who normally did so well in school was starting to come apart. I can only guess they figured I somehow lost a massive amount of my intelligence and/or just wasn't as smart as I'd shown myself to be for, oh, the past twelve years or so. I had no support. None. Even so, the fact that I never finished college (and did so poorly at it) is something that I'm still ashamed of and hope to one day remedy, but for right now I've had to focus on other stuff like raising my son, helping take care of dying relatives, and basically be a support system for everyone else but myself.
Uh, yeah, that's part of why I moved this year, to finally start fixing the things that I can and coming to terms with what I can't repair. Also, I still have a bit of anger to process over the people who were supposed to be there for me utterly failing at that on every possible level.
( The Meme )
This is a bit of a sore subject for me, so I'll be brief. I was the honor student everyone hated in high school, though I didn't ever really apply myself as hard as I could have so I wasn't valedictorian either. Still, I graduated in the top 20 of my high school, which was an accomplishment considering quite a few ahead of me went on to Ivy League or close-to-Ivy-League schools. Me, I went to the University of South Carolina (which is actually an excellent school) and dropped out after three years, never even maintaining C average. Then I went off to Maine and got knocked up (yes, I am being a bit facetious here, though I did get pregnant obviously).
Shit happened in my life around my junior and senior years of high school. My home life was beyond stressful, school had always been sheer hell thanks to my peers, and then right out of high school I was dating an asshole and sincerely believed I could do no better. Things got worse after I went to college, and pretty much, I mentally fell apart. A decade-plus removed from the situation, I can look back on it and be amazed that I held it together for as long as I did and also wonder why no one in my life, teachers or family, thought to question why it is that someone who normally did so well in school was starting to come apart. I can only guess they figured I somehow lost a massive amount of my intelligence and/or just wasn't as smart as I'd shown myself to be for, oh, the past twelve years or so. I had no support. None. Even so, the fact that I never finished college (and did so poorly at it) is something that I'm still ashamed of and hope to one day remedy, but for right now I've had to focus on other stuff like raising my son, helping take care of dying relatives, and basically be a support system for everyone else but myself.
Uh, yeah, that's part of why I moved this year, to finally start fixing the things that I can and coming to terms with what I can't repair. Also, I still have a bit of anger to process over the people who were supposed to be there for me utterly failing at that on every possible level.
( The Meme )
