Were any of you traumatized by high school and carry baggage from it?

[Winston]

Have any of you ever had the following thoughts:

"If only I had learned to conform, adapt and thrive in high school, and perhaps excel in it. Then I would have been well adjusted in society. I would have gone on to college, found a good job, married my high school sweetheart and started a family. With a happy, well adjusted life as a conformist, I would have a family and rewarding career like everyone else. Then I'd be normal and I would have nothing to do with HappierAbroad or dating/moving overseas. If only it could have been like that. Why couldn't it have turned out that way? It was supposed to! Why did I have to become a misfit?"

"Deep down, we all know instinctively that no matter how bad society gets, the winners are the ones who conform and adapt to it, whereas the misfits will be weeded out by evolution so that they do not pass on their genes. That's how nature works and has worked for millions of years. We all know that even if we deny it. So no matter how smart or right the misfit is, he is going against evolution and therefore must ultimately lose. Only the strong and those who can adapt will survive.

So instinctively, the misfit will always be seen as a loser by women, even if he is right about everything he says or is brilliant in his insight. He is still a loser in the course of evolution. Women know this deep down, so their nesting instinct rejects such misfit men because they are in the worst position to raise a stable family with since they will not adapt to current trends. This is why women are not impressed by counter culture ideas.

Oh why did I have to be a misfit?! Why do I have to be one of the HA losers and misfits?"

Doesn't regret suck? And doesn't being a misfit suck too? What a life huh?

[WorldTraveler]

So Winston, do you still consider yourself a misfit? So do you believe no woman will want you? Please explain.

[IraqVet2003]

Hey Winston, I too had a hard time in high school especially during my freshman year. It was difficult for me for several reasons. First, I grew up as a military "brat"/ "third culture kid" (TCK) due to the fact my father was serving in the U.S. Army and just received an assignment to Fort Wainwright, Alaska. We had just move up from Fort Steward, Georgia. It was quite an adjustment. Second, I felt like the "new kid" and was trying to figure out were do it "fit in". But, I found I couldn't break into any of the social cliques (which consisted mostly of local civilian kids who grew up together ). I felt they were on a different wavelength than me and pretty much stuck to myself. And had few friends. In fact I was voted "THE MOST SHY" in my high school senior class year book (1991). Winston, throughout my childhood and adolescence I had faced a lot of loss of friends due to moving around because of my father's military career and their parents orders to PCS (permanent change of station) to another base/post. The other places that I had lived at while growing up were; Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Wildflecken, Germany, and Fort Steward, Georgia.
So, because of this I developed a strong "inner life", and excelled at academics (I was even an honor student) and was a gifted artist ( made detailed drawings of futuristic cities, cars, military weapons/vehicles, spaceships, etc.) Also, Winston I was a "bookworm"/intellectual in which I would read books on world history, geography, current events, military weaponry/conflicts, etc. and spent a lot of time in the school library during my lunch break. I did this also do to deal with the boredom, loneiness, isolation, depression, and to keep my mind occupied.
Then the third reason, I felt traumatized in high school (as well as junior high), was because I was teased, picked on, and bullied. I was called a "nerd", "gay" (for not having a girlfriend), laughed at, and sexually harassed by some girls (unwanted advances at junior high in Georgia), etc. I had faced the worse of this while riding the bus to and from school. So Winston, when I had read your e-book "Happier Abroad" and you told your childhood story of torment by your peers, I could relate a lot to your experience!!!!

[WorldTraveler]

Hey Winston, I too had a hard time in high school especially during my freshman year. It was difficult for me for several reasons. First, I grew up as a military "brat"/ "third culture kid" (TCK) due to the fact my father was serving in the U.S. Army and just received an assignment to Fort Wainwright, Alaska. We had just move up from Fort Steward, Georgia. It was quite an adjustment. Second, I felt like the "new kid" and was trying to figure out were do it "fit in". But, I found I couldn't break into any of the social cliques (which consisted mostly of local civilian kids who grew up together ). I felt they were on a different wavelength than me and pretty much stuck to myself. And had few friends. In fact I was voted "THE MOST SHY" in my high school senior class year book (1991). Winston, throughout my childhood and adolescence I had faced a lot of loss of friends due to moving around because of my father's military career and their parents orders to PCS (permanent change of station) to another base/post. The other places that I had lived at while growing up were; Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Wildflecken, Germany, and Fort Steward, Georgia.
So, because of this I developed a strong "inner life", and excelled at academics (I was even an honor student) and was a gifted artist ( made detailed drawings of futuristic cities, cars, military weapons/vehicles, spaceships, etc.) Also, Winston I was a "bookworm"/intellectual in which I would read books on world history, geography, current events, military weaponry/conflicts, etc. and spent a lot of time in the school library during my lunch break. I did this also do to deal with the boredom, loneiness, isolation, depression, and to keep my mind occupied.
Then the third reason, I felt traumatized in high school (as well as junior high), was because I was teased, picked on, and bullied. I was called a "nerd", "gay" (for not having a girlfriend), laughed at, and sexually harassed by some girls (unwanted advances at junior high in Georgia), etc. I had faced the worse of this while riding the bus to and from school. So Winston, when I had read your e-book "Happier Abroad" and you told your childhood story of torment by your peers, I could relate a lot to your experience!!!!

I was the smallest kid in my high school class and bullied too. So IraqVet2003 you sound like an intelligent guy. What have you done with yourself since high school to makeup for all this? Are you married, dating women, good job? How is life treating you?

[momopi]

High school was like...

In freshmen year you see upperclassmen on football team driving away in his jeep with 2-3 girls from cheerleader team. You have no jeep, no money, and no girl. @_@

So you get a job pushing shopping carts/bagging groceries and saved and saved until you got your license and bought an used cherry red Ford Mustang, one with an oil leak that just won't go away. >_>

Your teacher ask you "why so tired" and you reply "I worked a lot to afford the car and insurance". "Why do you need a car?". "I need the car so I can get to work.." =_=

By 3rd year in HS you are finally able to give rides to a cute girl with nice rack from the short flag cheer team. Things go well and you take her to the beach for bonfire and some TLC on weekend evenings. Just when you get to second base, her older cousins/friends start taking her to college parties with way cooler guys. X_X

Ah well, so you go hang out with your geeky friends to watch anime and play dungeons and dragons. Then you discover computers, which your geeky friends all have, but you don't have one because you spent all your money on your car. So while your friends are playing Bard's Tale and Dungeon Master on their Amiga or Atari ST, you're playing Ultima on your Nintendo. ;_; <sniff>

Best thing that ever happened in HS... having a great sympathetic teacher who helped to sign me up to take classes at local community college (the HS sent us on a bus to local jr. college and back). Suddenly your world becomes much, much bigger as you realize what a small dump your HS really is. ^_^



Oh and, I finally got one of these used, with A1300 genlock and huge 1.5 MB RAM expansion when I was in college. ;p

[jamesbond]

Oh why did I have to be a misfit?! Why do I have to be one of the HA losers and misfits?"

Winston think of all the fun places you have visited throughout the world. How many of your former high school classmates have ever done the things you have? Your life is much more interesting than any of your former classmates.

Winston, would you ever go back to your high school reunion? You would have a lot to brag about with all the countries you have been to.

[Winston]

Check out God's two part answer to my angry prayer about why he allowed me to be bullied in high school. It's amazing and has healed most of my psychological scars and wounds. See the story here:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31451&p=274190#p274190

[Eric]

Hey Winston, I too had a hard time in high school especially during my freshman year. It was difficult for me for several reasons. First, I grew up as a military "brat"/ "third culture kid" (TCK) due to the fact my father was serving in the U.S. Army and just received an assignment to Fort Wainwright, Alaska. We had just move up from Fort Steward, Georgia. It was quite an adjustment. Second, I felt like the "new kid" and was trying to figure out were do it "fit in". But, I found I couldn't break into any of the social cliques (which consisted mostly of local civilian kids who grew up together ). I felt they were on a different wavelength than me and pretty much stuck to myself. And had few friends. In fact I was voted "THE MOST SHY" in my high school senior class year book (1991). Winston, throughout my childhood and adolescence I had faced a lot of loss of friends due to moving around because of my father's military career and their parents orders to PCS (permanent change of station) to another base/post. The other places that I had lived at while growing up were; Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Wildflecken, Germany, and Fort Steward, Georgia.
So, because of this I developed a strong "inner life", and excelled at academics (I was even an honor student) and was a gifted artist ( made detailed drawings of futuristic cities, cars, military weapons/vehicles, spaceships, etc.) Also, Winston I was a "bookworm"/intellectual in which I would read books on world history, geography, current events, military weaponry/conflicts, etc. and spent a lot of time in the school library during my lunch break. I did this also do to deal with the boredom, loneiness, isolation, depression, and to keep my mind occupied.
Then the third reason, I felt traumatized in high school (as well as junior high), was because I was teased, picked on, and bullied. I was called a "nerd", "gay" (for not having a girlfriend), laughed at, and sexually harassed by some girls (unwanted advances at junior high in Georgia), etc. I had faced the worse of this while riding the bus to and from school. So Winston, when I had read your e-book "Happier Abroad" and you told your childhood story of torment by your peers, I could relate a lot to your experience!!!!

This. This is my story, IraqVet...we are brothers in this.

It's been a really interesting, lonely, difficult/ different life.
I wouldn't mope over it Winston. HS and American culture are nothing to aspire to be. Infact I felt degraded, poisoned .... like I was being dumbed down.

[josephty1]

Deleted

[CB8]

Have any of you ever had the following thoughts:

"If only I had learned to conform, adapt and thrive in high school, and perhaps excel in it. Then I would have been well adjusted in society. I would have gone on to college, found a good job, married my high school sweetheart and started a family. With a happy, well adjusted life as a conformist, I would have a family and rewarding career like everyone else. Then I'd be normal and I would have nothing to do with HappierAbroad or dating/moving overseas. If only it could have been like that. Why couldn't it have turned out that way? It was supposed to! Why did I have to become a misfit?"

"Deep down, we all know instinctively that no matter how bad society gets, the winners are the ones who conform and adapt to it, whereas the misfits will be weeded out by evolution so that they do not pass on their genes. That's how nature works and has worked for millions of years. We all know that even if we deny it. So no matter how smart or right the misfit is, he is going against evolution and therefore must ultimately lose. Only the strong and those who can adapt will survive.

So instinctively, the misfit will always be seen as a loser by women, even if he is right about everything he says or is brilliant in his insight. He is still a loser in the course of evolution. Women know this deep down, so their nesting instinct rejects such misfit men because they are in the worst position to raise a stable family with since they will not adapt to current trends. This is why women are not impressed by counter culture ideas.

Oh why did I have to be a misfit?! Why do I have to be one of the HA losers and misfits?"

Doesn't regret suck? And doesn't being a misfit suck too? What a life huh?

Sometimes I felt this way, but when I think about how much richer my (and your) life is because of being a misfit, the pain that comes with it is worth it. Yes, the conformists have an easier life, but they are also trapped within a prison of their own making. They have no choice but to do what everyone else does, lest they be deemed a misfit. To me, not being able to be who you want to be is true hell, and these people have dived right into it.

To answer your original question, yes I was traumatized by high school. I don't even like watching media centered around high school because it brings up painful memories. For misfits, high school teaches us about the cruelties of human nature. For many of us, it was our lowest point. Doesn't it confound you that some people actually consider it the best time of their life?

[yick]

I didn't like school (though I always liked learning and the acquirement of knowledge...) our house was always full of books and my parents always encouraged us to read which I am eternally grateful to them for that. Most people I knew disliked their time at school - it isn't uncommon to find people who talk of disdain about their schooldays, even for the more successful conformists that are around.

There are some people I am aware of who loved their school days, they tend to stay there with the friends they made there - not moving forward, staying in the town they grew up in, reliving moments from the 'Class of 1988' and I feel sorry for them that the vast majority of what made those days appealing has now left them, their hair, their looks, their physical fitness, the pretty girls surrounding them - a lot of these type of people are so entrenched in their past that they have nothing to look forward to as they enter middle age, except for their memories of their peak when they were children.

School taught me about people and how to deal with them, if you haven't learned that from school then you haven't learned much of any importance.

I've moved on with no bitterness or regret - I am happy in my present which is what most people should be aiming for. There is nothing you can do about the past and school - my school was a working class school interested in churning out factory and cannon fodder - I see it for what it is and so should you.

[Adama]

I had a hard time, and I had no idea why. Literally I had no clue how much damage high school had done to me. But it wasn't the only thing, certainly.

I remember in some of my classes whenever I responded to a question or spoke up in class in any way, at least one of my fellow classmates would openly laugh at me or mock me. This happened for at least a couple of years.

They hated me so much, and I honestly blamed myself and believed I was defective because of it. They called me nebulous things like weird and the rest. The only thing different was that I was quiet and minded my own business. They were the ones minding my business, which to me is the weird thing.

So I realize now this is intention emotional abuse meant to hurt the target.

I'm not upset by it anymore. In order to be cruel to someone who's done nothing to you, you must first either consider yourself worthless, or you must have completely abandoned your soul and conscience. I have seen some people who have tried to harm me suffer some terrible consequences. So there is just compensation. Just it doesn't happen on a schedule.

[Adama]

Have any of you ever had the following thoughts:

"If only I had learned to conform, adapt and thrive in high school, and perhaps excel in it. Then I would have been well adjusted in society. I would have gone on to college, found a good job, married my high school sweetheart and started a family. With a happy, well adjusted life as a conformist, I would have a family and rewarding career like everyone else. Then I'd be normal and I would have nothing to do with HappierAbroad or dating/moving overseas. If only it could have been like that. Why couldn't it have turned out that way? It was supposed to! Why did I have to become a misfit?"

"Deep down, we all know instinctively that no matter how bad society gets, the winners are the ones who conform and adapt to it, whereas the misfits will be weeded out by evolution so that they do not pass on their genes. That's how nature works and has worked for millions of years. We all know that even if we deny it. So no matter how smart or right the misfit is, he is going against evolution and therefore must ultimately lose. Only the strong and those who can adapt will survive.

No, I am very glad that I am not a conformist. There is much more glory living this way than the other way that most people live. Their lives are already over, for the most part. We still have a lot more to do, and we can do a lot more. They got "locked in" early. Whereas we've had our whole lives to learn much more than they knew when they got married at their young age, or what we ourselves knew or could have known back then.

We've experienced many more things in this life than those conformists will ever get to experience. We've learned more because we've done more. We know ourselves better and our preferences. And we have more wisdom because of all these things.

We can see the pitfalls and advantages to many scenarios, and now we can make much more of an informed decision. Whereas when we were younger, it wasn't a matter of being informed but simply conforming.

And if you look on Facebook at our old friends' wives, you'll see that we're lucky in that hopefully we'll get to choose from younger women than ourselves. Whereas all those guys are married to women close to their own age.

Besides that, evolution is a myth and complete garbage. It's nonsense, and I just wish people would stop using Darwinism as an excuse to wish people dead or eliminate from humanity.

[Kradmelder]

Why is it so many of you had bad experiences in school? I had a circle of friends, we did many things together, like go on trips, camping, cycling, go to the bioscope etc. Even pick up team sports in the holidays.

I cant recall it being any trauma, but I wouldn't want to redo that phase of life even though it was carefree and just focussed on having fun.

What I can say is the army kills that person. When you come out the person that existed before is like he never existed. Dead and buried. Even to your parents. It was just impossible to ever go back. It is like even if you went home on leave you just wanted to get the fark out. You had seen too much, done to much, and had to change too much so that the person that was before is like a distant memory you can barely remember anything of it. You can remember things you did, but not thoughts. Like looking at that life from outside. Afterwards it is like there was your bungalow mates and the rest of world. Going back to the civvie world was like going on an Op where you clutch the little Prayer Card they used to give you to put your mind at peace but without a prayer card. The only thing that existed before and still existed was God.

The end result is I have no association with school. I would never go to any reunion, identify with it, or look up people from school or anything like that. That person died. I do keep in contact with a few old military mates, and when i do catch up on the rest are doing all over the world. When we do see each other it is like the years melt away and we saw each other yesterday. Too many are still in places like Afghanistan and Iraq and somalia. Cant get jobs as white men with no civilian skills. Once in a while some will contact me to borrow money for a family crisis like kids, but they always pay back and I always refuse to accept interest and tell them I am no jew to make money from your hardship.

[yick]

I think in my case - I lived in a very working class area and it was assumed that once we had left, we were done with education - if I had told my teachers that one day I would attend university and have a masters degree - they would have laughed in my face. To them - I was factory fodder, barely able to read and write and do simple reptitive tasks - job done as far as they were concerned - and I resented them immensely for it - they told me I was stupid and would amount to nothing on a constant basis and I knew that wasn't true - the one person - in fact the only person - who ever said that I wasn't stupid and that I was actually smart, was my dad.

Actually, we were took on a school tour (in the guise of 'careers advice') to an abbatoir near my house and the main guy showed us his stun gun and he goes 'we have a lot of fun with this bad boy during overtime' and we were all thinking 'The good times are coming...'

As for bullying, I was a mixed race kid in a working class, all white area so there were some nasty names being bandied about towards my direction but I could fight a bit and put a couple of kids in hospital with my bare hands - so no-one fancied their chances enough to take my lunch money or shove my head down a toilet - that never happened. What did happen was my non compliance towards the system which came around the age of 12, I had enough and was marking time until I left - the only subject I did partake in was history and I got 'A's' and was top set for that subject. Every other subject I was in bottom set, the remedial set. I was brought up to be polite and respectful to my elders so I didn't go around being a gobshite to the teachers, but on the other hand, I just stopped trying and and stopped listening to them.

I became a university freshman at the age of 31.

As for Winston and his 'holocaust' and his 'non-conformity' all I can say is - as a teenage non-conformist - the education system punishes you to an extent where, when you leave, your options are nil - Winston went to a good university at 18, so in his case, someone must have said at his school 'Winston, you are a smart kid, you can go to university' and he did the required work to make that a reality, no offence to Winston and his experiences but that is conforming to some degree - I wish I f***ing had that at my school - I was told I was going to sweep the streets and be a bum - I bet no-one said that to him at his school. He went to university at 18 and to a good university - when he talks about 'the holocaust' he talks about not getting laid - now that might have been traumatic, I don't know, because I didn't sexually awaken until I was around 18.

As for South Africa - it must have been different where you (white South Africans) are the future leaders of the country and even the dumbest white kid had opportunities to advance through the civil service, you had a million 'kaffirs' to work in the factories and down the mines, whereas - we were the 'kaffirs' (albeit mostly white) no-one touted us as 'future leaders' or managers or people who were going to lead - and if I had been born in the UK 20 years before - I would never had gone to university because that opportunity would not have been there.