Ditched

[damselindistress]

Have you ever ditched or played hooky from school?

[Shakti]

No, however due to illness and various medical conditions, I do miss a lot of school. While most people would assume that this would be having a negative impact on my education, I would disagree. While at home, sick, I do work. Meaning that when I return to school, I often find myself a head of the rest of the class.

This, along with the very fact that I dare to miss their lessons, seems to annoy one or two of my teachers. Some dislike that I can miss so many lessons and still achieve higher marks in exams than people who have never missed a class. Take last term in business, for example. I'd say I missed 75% of classes, and when I was there, I don't mind admitting I put very little effort in. My teacher told me I would fail the mock exam and that it would be my own fault. What? My own fault for being sick? Oh so intelligent, and this women is meant to be a teacher. When I got the result of the exam back, it turned out most of the class had failed with D's and F's. I got an A. Funny enough, she shut up about me missing classes after that.

But what annoys me is, I get people having a go at me for missing lessons. I'm sick. What the hell can I do about that exactly? Nothing. It's not like I do it on purpose as some of them seem to think. Of course, not all my teachers are like that, some have actually taken the time to find out why I'm ill so often and what the medical conditions are. While others don't care and seem to assume I am just playing truant.

Of course, when it came to parents evening a few weeks ago and every damn teacher moaned about my attendance, they soon got told the reasons behind my absence and most were shocked that they hadn't been told. I did point out that it was their responsibility to find out or ask me, (instead of having a go at me for it) not the other way around. Only two out of fourteen teachers already knew why and that was because they had cared enough to find out for themselves.

Apologies for the long post, I kinda went off on a slight tangent...

[damselindistress]

I just responded to your other post about how I liked long posts, so no worries. If you hadn't said all that, I wouldn't know all that stuff about you and it was interesting to read.

It sounds like you'd do well in home school. Not saying you should change, but a lot of things about public school sucks (not that I'm saying I hate public school.) When you do schoolwork on your own, you can work at your own pace and also learn in your own way. A lot of public school is spent doing nothing important. I was home schooled the last two years of my education and the home schoolers I knew could learn the same amount of stuff as people did in public school in 1/4 of the time. It's ridiculous. They just move slowly in public school because they don't want to leave people behind, but I think that winds up boring and tiring out the majority of the students. I learned more, quicker when I was in home school than when I was in public school.

But like I said before, home school has its own problems, so I'm not saying it's perfect.

Anyway, yes, I ditched school before and I missed half a semester once of school because of a psychological issue. (I can't believe I just said that much about myself. I'm usually not that open.)

[Shakti]

I see your point. State school's do tend to focus more on not leaving people behind than challenging those who could do with it. Or at least, mine does. This was something I mentioned to a few of my teachers. The fact that it was ridiculous that say if I had missed two lessons, when I got back, the class would still be on the same page/chapter as they were when I left, while at home, I had read the whole book in the same space of time. Some teachers apologised at promised to try harder. Others told me to shut up and not to be so arrogant. Which, honestly, was harsh. I was actually trying to help them improve their teaching style so that not only me, but the rest of the class, could get more out of lessons. It wasn't like I said they were boring and couldn't teach or anything (Which is true for some them actually, but I'm not mean enough to point it out to them).

But at the same time, I don't believe having a bad teacher puts you at disadvantage if you do want to learn. These days, what with the internet, it is possible to make up for having a bad teacher. I feel I deserve the marks I get because I work hard for them, for the most part.

[TomBeasley]

I know exactly what you mean. Teachers have to hold back because their job to get everyone through with pass grades. Unfortunately, this means that people who will easily get a pass grade and want to access the higher level stuff don't get half as much chance to do this as they should.

And no, I've never ditched.

[Unknown]

I try not to miss school as I have GCSEs and I am getting bad grades which annoys my mum. I think I have missed enough school in the past 2 years due to the fact I was a accident magnet.

[shadowslayer]

I skip school all the time, I hate school. My grades are mostly D's.

[TomBeasley]

Apr 13, 2009 0:38:01 GMT @shadowslayer said:

I skip school all the time, I hate school. My grades are mostly D's.

I hope you're aware that getting grades that bad means you have very little chance of getting a decent job. It's worth living through the boredom that is school in order to get a decent job for the rest of your life.

[Shakti]

Apr 13, 2009 0:38:01 GMT @shadowslayer said:

I skip school all the time, I hate school. My grades are mostly D's.

Maybe if you spent more time in class your grades would be better? Just a thought there.

[damselindistress]

Apr 13, 2009 11:34:01 GMT TomBeasley said:

Apr 13, 2009 0:38:01 GMT @shadowslayer said:

I skip school all the time, I hate school. My grades are mostly D's.

I hope you're aware that getting grades that bad means you have very little chance of getting a decent job. It's worth living through the boredom that is school in order to get a decent job for the rest of your life.

That's actually not true. It's something they just tell you in high school to scare you. I thought the same thing until I actually experienced life outside of high school.

First of all, high school degrees mean nothing because everyone has them. The only people who care about your high school grades are colleges and even if you get all F's all through high school, you can still go to college. If you get a good enough SAT score then you could go to any college you wanted and no one would care about your F's. Even if you get a horrible SAT score though, you can go to a Junior College. Junior Colleges accept everyone (no matter what) and as long as you pass all your classes in Junior College (where it really matters) then you can move on to a 4-year school and get a normal degree. High School grades do not matter at all unless you want to go straight to Harvard or a pretty good college or something.

People don't go to college because they don't want to, not because they have bad grades.

Secondly, sometimes even college degrees don't matter. They just guarantee that you can't get minimum wage jobs anymore. My Mom has not worked in about 30 years and it isn't because she didn't want to. When she applied to minimum wage jobs, they said she was overqualified because of her college degree and wouldn't hire her and when she tried to get jobs using her degree, they said they didn't like her for whatever reason and wouldn't hire her. It was actually harder for my Mom to get a job BECAUSE she had a college degree, not easier. If you get a degree in something hard to get a job in (my Mom didn't do this by the way), then it might be really hard to almost impossible to get a job when you get in the "real world."

Thirdly, some people who didn't go to college make more money than people who did. There's lots of jobs you don't need degrees for having, like making your own company, writing, inventing something, and working your way up at a minimum wage job. When you work at a minimum wage job long enough, you usually start working your way up to manager and then general manager and then higher and higher because most people don't stick with those jobs that long. And those people actually make very decent salaries.

And on the opposite side of that, there's lots of jobs you can get a degree for and not get paid that much to have. Like being a Pastor for instance. You often have to get a doctorate, but you get paid very little even though you have a high degree.

My fiance's step Dad also used to have a 6-digit salary and he did not get a college degree or even a high school degree (he dropped out.) He works in computers and he still makes a lot, even though he lost his last job (because the company went out of business) and he still doesn't have a college degree or high school degree.

It's better to get a college degree and get good grades, yes, but it's not a necessity is my point.