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untonuggan) wrote2013-11-16 08:23 am
untonuggan) wrote2013-11-16 08:23 am
NaBloPoMo Day 16: Some number of things makes a meme
Yoinked from several people, here's a meme that is going around that includes several things you may or may not already know about me. Leaving off the obvious like "Oh I knit a LOT" and going for some more obscure things...I think. It's early, so we'll see.
- My favorite activity in third grade was building forts or lean-to's in my (or a friend's) backyard, and I secretly wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder.
- I skipped the 8th grade, and took a *lot* of flack for it in school. Probably a good decision academically, but social hell.
- I went to an "alternative school" founded by hippies.
- I went to prom with another girl.
- My mother is an immigrant to the US, but she's from the UK so for most people that "doesn't count" (and I could say a lot about this).
- My favorite place on this entire planet is the lane looking up the moors behind my grandmother's domicile.
- I burned out on academic history, but I still secretly love it.
- I haven't been consistently able to read a book for approximately three years due to some combination of meds and/or brain fog. The concentration issue is spreading to TV shows and movies.
- I have a bunch of diagnoses, so many that most doctors give me looks of skepticism and a hard time. (The good doctors just look more curious.) Key highlights include: fibromyalgia and/or late stage Lyme; POTS/dysautonomia; Bipolar Disorder; PTSD; migraines.
- My partner and I have been together for 9 years (yay! *cheers*), and are still not out to her entire family. It's complicated. However, just came out to one more and she didn't care. So +1.
- OK, I have to talk about fiber at least once. I'm part of a Spinning and Weaving Guild. A *guild*. (see #1 and #3 and #5 and #7 for why I find this extra exciting.)
- Spiritually I consider myself a Buddhist and a recovering Pagan, because I had some Bad Experiences with people but not the Goddess. If that makes sense to y'all.
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2 is interesting because middle school is terrible, and anything that involves less middle school should be a win in my mind. But your experience has me wondering if skipping grades is easier to do earlier or later?
5 is interesting because I am a first generation American, and a lot of people that I like very much are too.
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For example, a school near us is Just Ninth Grade for the entire county. So if you get pantsed or have a weird haircut or, god forbid, are outed as something other than heterosexual and cisgendered -- that's your reputation for everyone in your peer group in the county until you graduate from high school. And everyone will remind you, forever, and just...high school really sucks.
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IME, the big problem isn't grouping kids by age, it's having adults who ignore/encourage bullying. I know that's what happened to me in grade school... teachers and staff encouraged other kids to bully me, sometimes joining in. I was bullied by kids in my grade, as well as grades above and below me. It's really rough when you're in 8th grade and a 2nd grader is giving you shit while a teacher laughs. I've heard a lot of stories both from people I know and news accounts about bullied kids that are the same. That's a HUGE problem, and it's an ongoing on, and has nothing to do with sorting kids by age or grade level or ability or anything else.
The USA has this big weird ingrained bullying culture, and a lot of people are pushing back against it, but most of the solutions proposed so far are bandages slapped on top of deeper, festering wounds.
That's also why I don't like small towns. Which, a lot of people find them super supportive and love them, and yay for them! But I find small towns and their residents/lifestyle to be intrusive and prefer the casual anonymity of living in a big city. If my kid has some huge problem at his school? I can relatively easily apply for him to attend a different school less than a mile away, and have a bunch of choices. And he'll have 150-200 kids in his grade each year, cycling through who he's classmates with every year. So it's easier to avoid a specific bully or set of bullies, in theory, and making it harder for That One Thing to haunt a kid/young adult forever.
I'm sorry you were bullied, and that it dragged around after you. That SUPER sucks and is wrong. After my intensely awful grade school experience, high school was an amazing place... once I got past second guessing every overture of friendship as a potential trap. It's not a coincidence that my high school was WAY bigger than my grade school. A few of my grade school associates tried to continue their pattern of bullying behavior toward me and were pretty generally treated as odd and undesirable by our other peers.
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I did not skip grades, but I was gifted tracked as a child. Several of my good friends did skip grades, and at least one who was female had weirdnesses with an older "boyfriend" (I can't think of the correct word for this not quite boyfriend, not quite predator) that may not have been unlike the experiences that
I have a child who is younger than yours and probably going to be above average, but he also has a birthday that is about three days after the school cut off for grade levels. Since I went to poor quality schools, I am a little worried about gifted boys who have behavioral issues due to boredom.
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I am glad you two are talking because you seem like you would get on. :)
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and did not meet their abuser in physics class that they were technically two years ahead in?As a second-generation American, I salute you! Also partner is...I dunno if she counts as first or second generation, probably first even though she was conceived in the US (but born overseas). And my sister-in-law is a second-generation American as well. A lot of people that I like very much are some form of recent immigrant or children of immigrants.
OTOH my dad can trace family back to the early 1700s in the not-yet-United-States, so, it's kind of a mindfuck on my part, the whole child-of-immigrant thing.
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Also, I really hope Mugabe stops f*ing up Zimbabwe sometime soon and that a better system of government (with less exorbitant inflation) comes into place. Also better HIV/AIDS policy than that stuff Mugabe spews. And none of this "blame everything on queer people" institutionalized homophobia crap. *deep breaths* I have All The Feels about Zimbabwe.
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