My Complicated Relationship With School

 “The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.” ~ Tom Bodett

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Dear readers,

I hate school. Ever since I was a kid, I have hated school. It was a mental prison for me. I didn’t do well in school, and even when I did well for three years (mid-80s to low-90s student), I still hated it.

I come from an Asian family, which already has complications. My parents wanted good grades from my sister and me. Neither my sister nor I were straight-A type of students; my sister was average, and I was below average from grade 1 to 8. In my ‘Grades Aren’t Everything’ post, I touched on school, where I go more in-depth with my grades and feelings towards them. 

We went to a French Immersion school, so every subject was in French. Now, I have a thing to say when it comes to languages. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t learn new languages for the life of me. My first language was supposed to be Cantonese, but I was terrible at it. I realize I’m bad at speaking in general, even in English. But, when I was younger, I couldn’t pronounce sounds well, so when I was learning to say, I couldn’t pronounce certain sounds in Cantonese, and my mom would always correct me. I didn’t like it because it wasn’t the simple “correct, repeat, move on” type of thing. She would tell me I was saying it wrong, sound it out, make me repeat it fifty times, and then make me feel dumb about it by constantly bringing up how I spoke so badly. After that, I just stopped. I stuck with English. 

English was more manageable, but it was still incredibly difficult for me. For some reason, my brain couldn’t understand what letters made what sounds, but more importantly, it couldn’t understand how to move my tongue to make those sounds. I didn’t know how. Not to mention, combining certain letters makes the same sound as one letter or one letter makes multiple sounds depending on the letter beside it. It was confusing, and I hated it as well. 

Then came the French. At six years old, I was suddenly learning everything in French and barely knew English or Cantonese. I couldn’t even speak one language close to fluently, and suddenly, I had to learn a completely new one. 

I was so bad at French that the school called my parents halfway into the school to tell them that they should consider switching me to an all-English school because I couldn’t understand the language. But my parents didn’t want that. My sister went to this school. They wanted me to learn the country's two main languages, and it would be easier if my sister and I went to the same school, so they kept me where I was. It became a big fight, and by the end of it, I promised to do better. I got a tutor, and the school never called again. 

Did I actually improve? I don’t know. Nothing changed because I struggled with it for the rest of my elementary school life. 

Since I barely understood French, I didn’t understand any subjects. The only subject taught in English was music. Math, science, art, drama, gym, French, etc were all in French. Now, science itself isn’t even in one language. There are names for things that come from Greek words, Latin words, and other old languages, so I was screwed. I didn’t understand anything. I failed most of the courses, and if it were for the ‘you can’t fail elementary school’ law, then it probably would’ve taken me a few extra years to finish. It was horrible. 

It’s sad because now I don’t have a basic understanding of most subjects. For example, I don’t understand the government. This was taught in grades four and up, and I don’t understand it. I don’t know the different parties of the government; I don’t understand what they stand for or what it means when you say are you ___ party? I also don’t know anything about the First World War or the time before that or between World War 1 and World War 2. Everything was taught in French, and I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t go to my parents for help because they are first-generation immigrants to this country and didn’t know themselves. But when they would explain some stuff to me, it was in Cantonese. Now, I can understand Cantonese; I just couldn’t speak it, but when I was young, I was as clueless as I was when I was learning French. At this point, I’m an adult and still have zero understanding of politics, and it’s just embarrassing. I know I should try, but there’s a self-hatred towards myself about being so far behind everyone that when I try, I just give up.

I started to hate school because I was too far behind. Teachers would get annoyed at me for not understanding “basic” concepts, and my parents would yell at me for not understanding anything, so I felt so alone. I just tried my hardest to study and did the best I could.

In grade three, I studied hard for a test—I think it was about the Sun—and I got an A. My dad helped me study, and I made a game out of it. But my teacher accused me of cheating. She had sat me down about a week or two after the test and asked me questions about the answers. I don’t know about anyone else, but the second a test is done, I wipe it from my memory. I would recall once I studied it again, but ONLY WHEN I studied it again. But my teacher called on me randomly a week or two later, so I didn’t remember anything. I barely even remember what the test looked like. But because of that, I couldn’t answer her questions, and she said I cheated and gave me a D (which would’ve been a zero if she was allowed to fail me). I tried to tell her I never remembered anything after a test and didn’t cheat; this was a more straightforward concept for me to understand, but she didn’t listen. The one time I understood something and felt confident after a test, I was accused of cheating. It was so annoying. I get it, but it was still irritating. If she had given me a couple of days to study and gave me another test, I would’ve done well. I just needed a refresher, but she didn’t give me that opportunity. 

Then, there was the time when my math teacher made me write a test on a topic I wasn’t even here for. I did competitive gymnastics in elementary school, and I was away for a week for competitions, but when I came back, he had a test on the last three lessons (which I missed), and obviously, I failed it. I tried to tell him I wasn’t here, but he wasn’t listening to me—more specifically, he didn’t even let me tell him. He just dismissed me. Then he called me to his class at lunch and yelled at me for doing so poorly. I was in grade 8 and doing well in math because math was taught in English. My grade 7 math teacher made math more straightforward to understand, so I was struggling in math at this point. So he was disappointed in me. I was one of the few people in the class who was good at math, and he started yelling at me for not caring about his class and not studying, and I just cried. I couldn’t help it. I cry whenever people yell at me, and in my brain, all of this could’ve been avoided if he had just let me talk on the test day. I felt so hopeless then, and I had never been the type of person to stand up for myself. I hated confrontation, but always because my natural response is to cry, I tend not to be able to speak if I wanted to. But when I started crying, he stopped yelling and looked panicked and let me calm down before I quietly said, “I wasn’t here, remember.” Then it clicked in his brain, and he gave me a quick lesson. Then, he made me solve a few problems myself and passed me.

So, throughout elementary school, school became a trigger. 

High school came, and I refused to go to teachers for help. It was in English because I went to a sports school, and I could finally start understanding what I was learning. I didn’t want to deal with teachers. I didn’t want them to talk to me or me to have to speak to them, so I studied so hard that it came to the point where my parents had to drag me out of the house. It was good because I was getting good at school. My grades improved, but I started relying on good grades for validation. It was as if every good grade I got, I was healing my inner child, and every bad grade I got, my inner child became more damaged. I became so obsessed with it that it was a problem.

When I got to university, my grades were shit. My health had taken a significant downfall during my first year, and my mental health went down with it, so I became incredibly depressed, turned suicidal, and my grades dropped. I didn’t care about school, but seeing the bad grades hurt me.

Now, school is a mental prison. I associate school as a negative thing, and now… now I can’t see it as anything more than a prison. It’s worse because it’s not like I’m locked down in school, but it’s like an invisible force not allowing me to leave. 

I want to drop out, but I can’t. What am I going to do without an undergraduate degree at this age? You can’t get anything more than a minimum-wage job. I’m stuck in following the societal timeline, and it doesn’t help that my health hasn’t improved much. Mentally, I got better physically, I’ve gotten worse. But my biggest stressor/trigger is school. The second I feel ignored by the school when I ask for help or when my grades slip, so does my mental health. One tiny minor inconvenience is enough to send me tumbling down. But if I leave school, I feel like I have failed. If I stay, I’m trapped in a gray area of stress, and I’m always on the verge of having a mental breakdown.

It’s a weird circle I’m trapped in, and the only thing I can do is serve my time in this prison before I am free.

Thank you for reading

A.B.💜

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The reason for the bow and arrow emojis is that I found this explanation of the bow and arrow and fell in love. One can take any symbol to mean whatever they want, so your meaning of a bow and arrow might differ from mine, and that’s okay. A bow and arrow helps me keep my hope and determination in my future. An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backwards. So when life is dragging you back with difficulties, it will launch you into something extraordinary. Just remember to focus and keep your aim.

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