When I was in the summer of my 15th year I was just coming off my worst academic year in what had been a fairly productive and positive academic career. Whatever dreams my parents had of me one day coming home in a fly Mercades were quickly dashed by two successive "D"s in World History.
Interestingly, in later years I would find history fascinating and may have even at the time, but for the fact that my teacher had it out for me.
This may sound like school-boy lore: the teacher had it out for me. Why else would I be getting "D"s?
Well, truthfully it worked both ways. I had it in for her too.
I suppose anything could have set off what would become my ill-mannered ways: a wind blowing the wrong way at the right time can screw up most American teenagers pretty well.
The wind that blew for me was the second semester of my first year in high school. I was taking and advanced science course in biology, having taken some exam that got me out of whatever hell-class the freshmen were required to take and into the fast-tracked world of BIOLOGY!
I enjoyed biology pretty well and was pretty good at it despite struggling like hell.
All of that changed when my biology teacher switched two of the kids from the good table with two of the kids from the bad table, thus ending what had been (up to that point) a promising academic career.
I don't really remember actively doing anyting except perhaps bust up when one of the clowns I was sitting with said something funny, and Chuck and I were with the two worst. One of the guys wasn't so bad, but Rob was literally the worst. Backtalked, showed up to class regularly and obviously high, busted jokes, made himself a menace, etc. etc.
Whatever my role, however, I was now "with them" and actively loathed by my aging teacher.
Fast forward through a forgotten summer to this next semester and I find whoever I'd been scheduled for replaced by whom?
The same teacher.
This time I perhaps gravitated to the bad kids. James was also a goof, a backtalker. He and I spent most of class either providing new graphitti on the walls or else chipping through the sheetrock with our compasses -- lord knows we'll probably get cancer from the dust one of these days.
Thence to the backroom for cleaner.
Thence to missing the test review as I huffed Formula 409 and wiped graffiti off the walls instead of taking notes. At least I learned about the Vandals, so the class wasn't a total loss.
Thence to two straight D semesters in a class required by most colleges.
My parents thought something had to change.
That something would be my grades.
Perhaps that other something would be my attitude.
We all arrived at Active Learning knowing how much it cost, knowing that nobody likely wanted to actually be there, knowing we'd all be overprivledged kids who'se parents idea of involvement perhaps meant sending kids to camp rather than trying to work with them.
We were all sorts of scholastic outcasts. Most of us had some sort of bad attitude. Many of us had bad attitudes because it covered up some hidden flaw.
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The first night there I didn't know anybody. Not by dinnertime, anyways. We were put up in our dorm rooms with some other person perhaps there, perhaps to arrive later. The whole thing is a model of camp or school first days, so whatever -- no point in explaining that.
Awkward, yes.
Go explore or something until dinnertime.
Still haven't met my roommate so I know officially no one and grab an early seat at a table by myself.
Counselor comes, sits down with me.
We shoot the shit for a bit, she invites some other student over, some dude with a mohawk.
Whatever my attitude problems, clearly this guy's were way worse.
And then we talked, this counselor and this guy and I. Back at my school, and probably at his as well, we'd probably never be seen together. American teenagers fly their colors on the outside and it was clear we weren't of the same type by clothes alone.
Then again, we weren't all that unlike -- so I found out.
A big lesson for a fifteen year old.
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