Hey Pandas, How Is Or Was School For You? (Closed)

Elementary school was fun. Middle school kinda sucked even though there were some good things. Kids are so mean in middle school.

I'm going in to High School this year, so I don't have the full "school years" experience. Elementary school was great, the kids there were mostly friendly, but there were obviously some bad apples. No one judged others then, so I was really under-prepared for Junior High. 6th grade was ok, my friendship got really rocky with my best friend, it later fell apart. I never really had friends in Middle School, just people I would talk to in class and wave at in the halls, not the kind one would invite to their house, but great people. In 7th grade I got depression because I got judged a lot for being a "horse girl" and "weirdo" and whatnot. I didn't let it get to me for a while, but then I crumbled. Then, COVID hit and I had to stay home for the rest of the year after February. 8th grade was pretty good, I didn't have to interact with anyone for most of it, but I got really lonely and spent most of my free time playing Minecraft and video chatting with my best friend. I did get a lot of horse riding in, though. When I came back to school, all my old bullies just forgot who I was and I had a chance to start over. I made a few new friends and kept some old ones. Overall, I guess I had an average school career so far, minus COVID. I like to put it as "6th grade, I lost myself. 7th grade, I was lost. 8th grade, I found my new self."

Today at school one of my best friends tested positive for COVID and I had to be sent home to isolate for 10 days, also it's my friends bday today and we were going to go to the cinema but she has to self isolate too and I don't know what to do because I can't go to school

Hell 😬

I was bullied relentlessly - until I grabbed one of the bullies by the throat and (knowing it takes something like 13 mins to suffocate someone, so no real danger of getting there) squeezed. I had to do that one more time a few weeks later, then the bullying stopped. Forever, and by everybody. Not only was school quite alright afterwards, this also taught me a very valuable life lesson. I had felt absolutely powerless against the bullies before, and nothing I said or did would stop them.

Still, I wished I could do the same to the guy who invented the school system in the first place...

School sucked until I switched
Now it’s a lot better but before I wish I knew how much sexual harassment I was going to have to endure
Now it almost feels like it never happened or as if it happened to a different me

I liked school well enough but it was honestly the only safe place I had growing up so I wasn't there to learn, I was there because it was safe. I really messed myself up by doing just enough to pass my classes without doing more than that. The last time I cared about my grades was 5th grade. Plus there was food there. We weren't always hungry but there were a few really hard years and those years school was about the only food source I had.

Kids tried to bully me but its so hard to get under my skin they never had a real chance to. They put in a good effort however nothing they said or did phased me. Bonus to that the bullies generally left my friends alone because they couldn't 'do' anything about me. That and my eyes change colors which seems to scare the crap out of people. Believe it or not I've never actually gotten into a fight, but there have been several attempts to start one with me. Those did not go the way those instigators planned on.

I can tell you I've been to everything but a parochial school. We moved around a lot so I've gone to a K-12 where my graduating class would have been 22 (one of the largest in their history), to a major city school where my graduating class was close if not over 2,000 kids.