Warning: I sense an essay coming on!!
I dropped out of college after 3 months (UK 6th form college, so I was 16) because I couldn't handle the social pressures. Even before that though, I'd dropped out of school at 14. It saddens me, because I love learning and it was only having to be around lots of people that stopped me attending.
I skipped so many days at school that they started threatening to take my mum to court and fine her. What amazes me is that they never once called me in for a meeting and asked what the problem was! They just assumed I was a bad kid who couldn't be bothered to turn up at school, probably thought I was off round town shoplifting with delinquent friends or doing drugs or something, lol! In reality I was at home, reading or watching TV, and jumping in fright every time the phone rang in case it was the school! My dad had died the year before and my mum worked long hours so there was no one else around but my younger brother, who started skipping school with me because he hated it there too. After months of this, the school gave up on me and decided to send me to a small educational unit for kids with problems, and I spent the last year and a half of high school there. There were only about six of us and no one asked each other any questions about why we were there; it was like there was an unspoken agreement not to pry, which I liked. It took a while for me to get used to going though, I even skipped going there for a while but they were a lot more patient and understanding than the school.
I decided to go on to college afterwards, but I had to do catch-up courses in science and English as I had some missing coursework and the unit I'd been to didn't have very good resources. We only had two teachers; one for languages (I got the highest grade possible in French due to having one-on-one lessons, which was great!) and one for everything else, so maths, science and English were learnt out of books with very little help from the teacher and no apparatus for science lessons - my practical experiment for my science exam was dissolving sugar in water at different temperatures, lol! I was pretty depressed at the time so I didn't have much motivation and didn't complete all my coursework.
My taster day at college, a couple of months before it started for real, was
awful beyond belief! Only one other person from the unit was going on to college that year and he wasn't in my classes, so I was on my own. I hadn't kept in touch with anyone from school and was scared of bumping into them and having to explain why I'd disappeared. Every time there was a break between introduction speeches, I'd go and hide in the toilets, trying not to cry. It felt like school all over again and the thought of three more years of feeling like a failure and a loser made me completely miserable. I came home and told my mum, through hysterical crying, that I wouldn't be able to go and I didn't know what to do with my life.
September arrived and I somehow persuaded myself to go. I remember struggling for hours, trying to make my hair look decent and attempting to put on mascara (I never normally wore makeup and kept accidentally stabbing myself in the eye with the wand, lol!) It wasn't as bad as the taster day, and over the next few weeks I became friends with a couple of girls in the same classes as me. They were both quiet like me, and seemed to have problems in their pasts which I could relate to. I was really enjoying my English course and hating my science and business studies ones, but overall I was pretty happy there. It seemed like a new start, and I'd actually managed to make some friends! Then came the presentation part of the English class... we were supposed to do a short speech (I think 5 mins) on "something of importance to us". I felt physically sick just thinking of it. Bad enough having to stand up in front of 20 or 30 people and talk, but having to talk about something personal? No way!
I wrote a speech, but couldn't face going in on the day of the presentations. I knew that now I'd skipped it I'd have to do it at a later date, when no one else would be doing theirs. I carried on skipping college, and the bad old habits came back. Eventually, in the new year, I dropped out altogether.
I'd love to study art at uni, but my experiences in education have really put me off a classroom environment. Also, I draw quite slowly and I'm shy about people watching me work, so I think I'd struggle, at least at first. At the moment, I'm thinking about saving up for an Open University course so I can study from home in my own time.
