Thread:Crowsoul50/@comment-33229352-20190304041126/@comment-33229352-20190920010016

Oop I should be more active here

On another note I spent the whole day thinking about stuff that happened when I was young directly impacting who I am today (Read: Ishmael rants about accelerated learning programs)

Like I was put in the gifted program at my elementary school and I now have a crippling fear of failure, public speaking, and I believe my anxiety was exacerbated because of my experience there (which seems to be a universal thing? I’m hard-pressed to remember anyone who was in a gifted program in their elementary/middle school years who does not have some kind of mental illness now)

And that fear of failure is like an every day thing for me because I feel like I’m not performing on the level I should be, had I stayed on course with the program— people often skipped classes or grades because of it. Like I was reading at a college level in 5-6th grade and today I stared at a sentence for five minutes because I could not register anything as a word lol

And I learned nothing there?? My clearest memory there was when I had to make a presentation about Ellis Island and being absolutely terrified to actually present it and the teacher telling me multiple times to speak up when I did so

All the people that were placed in that class along with me are very arguably much more academic than I am lmao I look at them now and they’re straight up amazing I got placed in that program halfway through the year so I didn’t know anybody and I felt alienated as hell

But yeah I really don’t like accelerated learning programs because they don’t really continue for people? Like once you leave elementary school/middle school you’re just straight up on your own