Post-secondary or grade school.
The hardest part for me was the way the criteria for success changed between high school and college.
I aced high school because high school requires one to be smart. But I barely scraped by in college because college requires self-organization and discipline.
Nobody really sat me down and raised the flag on how bad my habits were, before college. The message I always got was about how “gifted” I was and how the world would be my oyster because I’m so smart.
The only person really striving to teach me discipline in high school was my track and cross country coach. For that I’m eternally grateful, because it could have been a lot worse.
But most of my adult life has been spent struggling to develop consistent output, struggling to keep promises, struggling to show up consistently.
Don’t know if that’s gotten better since I was a kid, but if I could change one thing it would be to do a lot more to train kids to fit into a structure where others are relying on them to deliver things on time. To keep working when things get hard, and not to rest too heavily on being “smart” as a plan for future success.
Smart is like 1% of success. The rest is conscientiousness.
Adhd didn’t exist back then.
Lucky you
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.
I got diagnosed at age 30. Literally nobody (except for the other autistics I know) believes it.
I flunked out of nursing school despite the content itself being fairly easy because I didn’t know how to deal with mean girl shit yet. I passed the second time by just doing whatever they told me to until I graduated. In particular, I remembered some advice from years earlier from an older roommate who had just gotten back from their coast guard training. They said their goal had been to go as long as possible before the instructor even knew their name. Honestly that’s been a pretty great strategy for me when I’ve needed to escape abuses of power ever since; keep your head down, do whatever they tell you to, don’t draw attention to yourself, then book it the first chance you get.
In nursing school right now. Pleased to say I’m having the opposite experience - I’m the guy that’s always asking questions, running study groups, and debating the prof after tests to try to get questions thrown out and boost everyone’s grade. So… pretty much everyone in the program, student and staff, knew my name and face from day 1… and I’ve had an awesome relationship so far with all of them.
It’s been difficult, but very gratifying and at times even fun.
Your instructors were shit.
No, they were nice like that to the male students. I was female presenting at the time so it was just a fucking tank of piranhas. The sexism for the men doesn’t really seem to start until you’re working ortho, psych, or ER and everybody starts looking at you like you’re a damn hoyer that transforms into a battle mech optimus prime style.
