Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions?

64 points

17 years ago

I feel really selfish even asking this. My parents are helping in every way they can despite my complaining, I've exhaustively switched schools and basically tried every possible option other than homeschooling or dropping out (which makes it even worse to say that I still hate it, after all the effort they've put into fixing it). But I do hate it, I'm not learning, and I feel like I'm wasting time, and it's not just because of the usual reasons teenagers seem to attribute to hating high school: I don't think the school subjects are boring, or any subject for that matter (the logic I use is, if it were boring, no one would have discovered it; you can only dull down a subject, it's already interesting in its own light), I'm introverted and spend most of my time reading or obsessively working on hobbies like programming, and I absolutely can't stand wasting time. I've feel that I've had one "good" year of school in all of middle/high school, wherein I was extremely lucky to have a group of passionate teachers all at once. That year taught me a lot, mainly because it showed me that these subjects school had dulled down before aren't actually uninteresting. I haven't had a good year since, though, which has been frustrating to say the least, although I have had a few good teachers...

I was reading one of Paul Graham's essays the other day (http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html), and came across one of those "dwarping" moments, as one of those passionate teachers I had used to say, in that almost every other paragraph were ideas I had thought about endlessly about before summed up concisely by someone more articulate than me. One of the ideas addressed, though, has been really tormenting me lately, because it's an idea I've had myself that I've been trying this past year to do but has not been working for me.

"If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn't mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn't think of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a waiter doesn't think of himself as a waiter. And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work."

This sounds great in theory and helps me to some degree, but in some ways makes things even worse. I try and get through every school day and have decent grades and all, but each day is so monotonous and so many of the things we do are such wastes of time that it just drives me insane. Going home to work on something more I feel is more important that I actually enjoy and am challenged with, while obviously provides enjoyment, in another sense make this feeling even worse because it diminishes school even more. I do 'real work', but I want to real work at school too.

I'd like to think that I'm just the problem. Maybe I'm just taking my education for granted and this is just a "self-fulfilling prophecy" sort of thing. But, I spend nearly every moment outside of school learning, just because I love to do it. I want to love school. I love learning. Why don't I love school? I can't express in words how frustrated this question makes me.

I was just wondering if you guys had any experiences or suggestions to share about school. If anyone else has gone through this could or could give me some advice or just show how I'm wrong I would really appreciate it. I know it doesn't sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but I really don't want to waste the next two years of high school.

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