Then again, heretical as this probably sounds, I'm no great fan of the original SW either. I think it's a good movie, but I disagree with what it's been hyped into. Of course, being female, I'm outside of the original movie's intended audience anyway...:P
Why my (male) friends expect me to be as enthusiastic as they are about a film series that has ONE major female character, who spends the entire movie gradually losing the spine that she at least SEEMED to have in the beginning... *shrug*
I wasn't talking about people like you. I was talking about the young tech-support people in the article. I have a great deal of respect for programmers, particularly ones who have been in the industry for a long time.
However, the end-user tech support industry is going to fall down and go boom as soon as people get clues. Meanwhile, it's a big old speculative bubble IMHO.
Sounds too familiar. Sounds like a lot of people I know, my boyfriend included (he declared a CS major originally for this exact reason).
The really scary ones are the ones whose lives are so focused on accumulating wealth that they justify it as "their favorite hobby that they happen to be getting paid for," let ALL other interests and human relationships dwindle (D&D? Sorry, got no time for that, have to go program... coffee? Maybe if we can go at 3 AM when I'm done with my latest project), and then act as if they're the smartest and most wonderful people in the universe.
To be fair, I know tons of CS-folk who are nothing like this. Our local SCA group's fencing marshal, for one. But it hits too close to home for me both because of my father (which I posted about previously) and because of my boyfriend, who was well on his way to becoming one of the aforementioned arrogant antisocial cartoon-stereotype techies when what he wants to do and would do in a second if the money was there is run a bookstore.
"Well, I'll work insanely for ten years and then settle down and everything will be fine and I'll have enough." That's what he used to say, and it took a lot of persuasion on my part to convince him that those years don't come back.
(Not to mention, the only reason techies make as much money as they do NOW is because the older generation is scared of computers. Hell, I'm an end-user who only ever took one class in programming, useless Robbie the Robot-PASCAL, and my boss thinks I'm some kind of expert! He's not the first that I've worked for who thinks this, either. Once the computer-savvy become the majority of the workforce, this whole little speculative bubble is going to pop REAL fast. IMHO.)
Sorry. Got carried away. *steps off soapbox*
This, folks, is why I didn't choose this field.
on
The Dark Side of IT
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· Score: 1
I certainly had the potential. A lot of people wonder why I didn't go into programming, or alternatively, why I'm not doing radio (my college obsession, which I was also damn good at).
The short answer is: I didn't want to end up like my father. OK, so he isn't in IT as such, but he's the business and management systems professor at a community college who knows how all the computers work.
Don't get me wrong. I love my dad, and I respect his dedication to his work. But he got obsessive. He started having to fix everyone's computer who asked. People in other departments at his college started coming to him for help because they had done silly things like somehow deleting COMMAND.COM files accidentally. The computer was, and is, his "other woman." It took a toll on my parents' marriage, on my relationship with him, and it is now taking a toll on his health. He's been in and out of the hospital for the past two years with stress-related illnesses.
I'd rather stay a temp-services secretary for the rest of my life than do that to myself. I'm just hoping I don't go through my mother's side of this (my boyfriend's a CS major, though he's thinking about switching to some other field and just doing a CS minor).
One of my favorite books. And yes, it makes much more sense as a mother/son metaphor than as a husband/wife metaphor. Sheesh, why reduce everything to sex?:P
And the radical-feminist (I make the distinction because I consider myself a feminist, yet disagree with what follows) "criticism" of this is so much tripe. Much like the people who want Huck Finn banned because "it's racist!" Um, the POINT is that this is an unhealthy situation for all parties involved, no? Silly critics who are perfectly willing to read evil WhiteMalePatriarchialConspiracy into everything and yet are unwilling to see the satire that is often being done to said "conspiracy.":)
Let's see... what have I gotten this week? A healthy mix of Make-Money-Fastish stuff, porno site ads, and "you too can become an instant success with spam!"
(And my boyfriend wonders why I don't want to live in the suburbs, EVER AGAIN. Geez, given that when we get around to having kids, they'll be third-generation geeks... seems like just a survival strategy there. In the city at least there are already so many different kinds of people that it isn't quite so bad. At least that's what happens here.)
I'll certainly agree on the bright young men point. One of my good friends, who would be a wonderful teacher, won't risk it because he's gay and all it would take is ONE spiteful student or parent to bring his life crashing down around his head.:(
I'm not sure I agree on the tenure point. The idea behind tenure is a very important one, and I'd be worried about the consequences for my father and people like him if there wasn't a tenure system in place. People who are very good teachers, who sometimes say things that the administration does not want to hear, would be in monstrous amounts of trouble.
Unfortunately, having had some bad teachers that couldn't be easily gotten rid of, there are too many times when tenure does do more harm than good. Theoretically, bad teachers should be sniffed out before they even come up for tenure, of course, but this doesn't always happen.
The tenure system doesn't need to be trashed so much as changed. It should still be possible to get rid of teachers for incompetence and/or emotional damage to students (and in theory, it is anyhow), but not for simply holding unpopular views. Were it not for tenure, any teacher who dared stand up against Geek Profiling would be screwed right now.
OK kiddies, enough. My boyfriend works for a toy store, and they had to open at midnight to sell Star Wars toys. The lines reached across the plaza! This is ridiculous. All you people who want your stuff to become collectors' items are in for a disappointment, because too many people have the same idea.
And another thing: overhyped movies are always a disappointment. Remember The Crying Game? I can't be the only one who figured out the "big secret" 20 minutes into the movie without already knowing about it.
Ignore the hype, go see it, and have fun. Don't expect it to be an earthshattering experience, though. I don't, but then again, I still have trouble understanding the hype about a cliched western set in space with lots of special effects. *shrug*
Actually, the kind of teacher I don't want anywhere near anyone's kids is the kind that is there solely to prove s/he knows more than the kids s/he is teaching. Those people are scary.
I'm not saying money can't be a concern at all -- hell, everyone has to make a living. But a doctor who became a doctor because of how much money doctors make is not someone I want taking care of me or my family. A doctor who got into the profession out of interest in the function of the human body or concern for others is likely to be a much better doctor, ya think?;)
And no, when I have kids, I will certainly NOT hire some kid who is only babysitting because s/he is too young for a real job. I will be interviewing all sitters first. May as well get them used to it. *grin*
In a world where people will pay hundreds of dollars for Tickle Me Elmo and thousands for a Beanie Babie, anything that someone considers valuable for WHATEVER misguided reason will eventually be worth lots of money.
Look at Magic cards. I refuse to play because I don't have that kind of money to devote to a game, and the "good" decks seem to require large investments. If I'm playing against some rich kid who has a thousand-dollar deck, I don't know if I've got much chance.
Pity that it's intruded into the online world, though.:(
OK, that's not literally what you said. Close enough.
There's a bit of a problem with that. Namely, people aren't going to care HOW good you are... if you make yourself into "too much of a troublemaker," you ain't going to get yourself another job. It's that simple.
I don't know if licensing would fix the problem or not... but I DO know that just wandering off of jobs isn't as easy as it sounds.
(Sorry, I've had this argument with my boyfriend often enough that he's slowly starting to believe I am right... I can't resist.)
OK, I am willing to grant you that the programmed atmosphere of your average school sucks a great deal. No problems there.
However, there is such a thing as cultural literacy. And I'm one of those crazy people who believes that it is somewhat important. I have had people try to convince me of silly things like "the term of a senator is two years, the term of a representative is four years." WHAT?!
And you'd be surprised at how relevant some of those "long dead writers" are. Not to mention how entertaining they can be -- one of my professors at Geneseo told our Chaucer class that it was his favorite course to teach because it gave him an excuse to get paid for telling dirty jokes.;)
I agree that those who didn't do well in school are not necessarily less intelligent. But guess what? In the Real World(tm), you don't always get to do exactly what you want, either. Learning to make the best of this is a VERY important skill for the rest of your life.
There's also the small matter of reading being a valuable tool for teaching people how to write. One of my biggest problems, personally, with the subset of computer geek that the person I'm responding to seems to belong to is their inability to explain what they're doing to the rest of the world without resorting to mass quantities of jargon. Sometimes I have to wonder if even THEY know what they're talking about...:P
Quite simple, really. Frankly, it won't be the students who make the decisions about which schools they end up at. It'll be the parents. And that's a problem for two reasons:
1. The students who want to be in the higher level school, even though the parents couldn't care less. Probably most likely to be a problem in the inner city -- IF the stereotype is correct, something I am not at all sure about. Likely to be somewhat of a problem anywhere with apathetic parents. (read: everywhere)
2. The parents who want their little darlings to have only the best, when said little darlings are apathetic at best and exactly what the school was designed to stop at worst. Remember "all the children are above average"? There are way too many parents out there who use their kids' accomplishments as their own pedestal. And a bunch of kids who don't want to learn is exactly what you don't want in a school like this.
I like the principle of magnet schools, and we have a good program of them where I currently live (Rochester, NY), BUT it would be a Very Good Thing to somehow ensure that the student was making the decision about where to go, NOT the parent. And given that high school students are generally minors, I'm not sure that this will ever be guaranteed. More's the pity, too.:(
Well, would YOU want to be a garbage man? They deserve the pay they get, if not more. Think about it -- a dirty, smelly job, that has a high risk of injury....
I'll be flamed into oblivion for even suggesting this, of course, but I still say that many computer professionals are quite overpaid.:P
And you know what? Teachers aren't THAT horribly underpaid, either. I know; my father is one. And I somehow got through college with no student loans, and was given a car when I graduated.
Quite frankly, the people who are "in it for the money" are the LAST ones I want anywhere near my children, when I have them.
Hello, my name is A.J. and I'm a geek. I learned to read when I was two years old, I am decidedly unathletic (though that is improving a little now that I've discovered SCA fencing), and in a lot of ways I was a "mini-adult" starting when I was five or so. Recipe for instant disaster when attempting to mix with other kids. And did I mention that I was tall enough to tower over most of my class? That's no help, either.
My parents, and the local school system, tried every academic solution available, and nothing seemed to completely fix the problems I was having. Hellmouth didn't end for me until I started attending a state college at the age of not-quite-sixteen.
Here were the steps:
1. I went to a Montessori preschool and kindergarten. Problems galore here, much to everyone's surprise. My original preschool teacher decided I was autistic because I couldn't tie my shoes. She was later fired for cracking a ruler over some kid's head. Kindergarten was better but not great -- my teacher informed my mother that I knew all my vowels but not consenants because we hadn't learned them yet. At this point, I'd been reading for two and a half years!!
2. Catholic school, first and second grade. First grade was wonderful thanks to a teacher who understood what was up with me and let me read out of the fourth grade reading book. Second grade was horrible. The teacher once asked my mother, "Well, don't you want your daughter to be NORMAL?" She, having been the "class brain" herself, had the sense to respond: "NO! Not when normal is six hours of television a day!" This woman then became the principal, which led to...
3. Homeschooling from 3rd-6th grade. This probably is what gave me something of a foundation of sanity. I was free to follow my interests: mathematical matrices, the history of France, environmental science, horseback riding, baking cakes... all of it was "school" for me. The down side was that most of the area homeschoolers fell into one of two camps, neither of which we fit: the "We are true Christians who don't want our kids taught *gasp* sex education!" camp, and what I called the "homeschooling anarchists" camp -- those who didn't seem to care if their kids EVER learned to, say, read. So, for various reasons, I decided I wanted to try going back to school. We sat down with the superintendent (who by now was a family friend) and that led to...
4. 8th-9th Grade: Public Jr-Sr Hellmouth. My experiences were textbook-case Hellmouth.
It started when I pulled an admittedly silly stunt to fit in, and indirectly caused a fistfight between two girls. I was considered "maladjusted" as a result, and sent to a counselor. She told me that sarcasm never solves anything, when it was the only defense I HAD against certain subsets of the school population. This woman did nothing to help my self-esteem, and actually made things worse. And, of course, gossip got around that I was talking to a counselor, which helped NOTHING.
Lots of other little (and not-so-little) incidents -- I nearly had my bike stolen by a bunch of guys higher on the social food chain, I had my French tests blatantly copied (and the teacher did nothing about it), and I had a choir director make my life miserable because I'm an alto and her definition of alto is "chicken soprano." She wouldn't let me try out for All-County Choir, and in a later competition, singing one of what would have been the tryout songs, I scored higher than someone who made the damn choir. Was I angry? You betcha.
Most significant of them all, a particular jock who was in 12th grade when I was in 9th, and decided that the 7th-9th grade girls were his harem. Only a couple of us "geek girls" complained about this, and the response? "He's just flirting... if you can't handle this, it's your problem." My best friend was thrown up against a wall by this person and told "I'm going to f**k you before I graduate if it kills us both." This is NOT just flirting, and yet it was blamed on the girl's perceived lack of social skills. I had a similar problem, went to talk to the aforementioned clueless counselor, and she broke confidentiality on me. The aforementioned jock spent the next few weeks threatening my life. NOTHING was done, even when this happened in front of teachers. And I had to see a lot of the person who was threatening me -- he was in choir, in band, and in the school play with me. I think it was one of the other actors who finally got him to leave me alone. Ironically enough, the same person who gave me all this trouble later defended me from some other folks who insisted on running their mouths at me.
I'd had as much as I could take, and thankfully I had an out...
5. A high school-college bridge program, housed at a private women's college. Here, I thought, there would finally be people like me. But "people like me" still turned out to be rare, and overall, the experience was a disappointment. The kids were bright, sure, but too many of them were also filthy rich and had the attitudes to match. To them, this was just a super-elite private school. One of them loved leaving little messages like "you should be dead, you f**king dyke!" on my dormroom answering machine. I knew who was doing it, but had no proof, and the administration there didn't believe me.
I was lucky there -- I did have wonderful teachers, and I got out of most of the "required" classes due to some summer coursework I had completed. The "traditional" college students were generally good to me, and I was able to "pass" as one of them most of the time, even though I was not-quite-14 when I started there. But eventually I decided enough was enough -- the teenage silliness of "I need a man!" got on my nerves, as did the drunken "men" who came to visit the dorm and pulled a water fountain out of the wall at 3 AM, flooding my entire floor and mildewing the lounge carpet. Also, the school's program in my area of interest was quite weak. It was time to move on...
6. I transferred to a small-ish state college. This was good as well as bad. After a year of strangeness and only a few friends, I found "my" people. The Real Friends I'd been hearing about all my life. But this, too, had its downside. Since I enjoyed something of real popularity for the first time in my life, my academic life suffered for it. I didn't see it that way at the time (and part of the problem was my tendency to bite off more than I could chew), and I made it through without flunking out, but I wish I had "applied myself" a bit more. Too late now, of course.;)
I've been out of school for two years now, and I want to go back, if I can find a grad English program in the area that will have me.:) I've got a job, I've got a fellow-geek boyfriend (though I could just as easily have a girlfriend *grin* but I'm content), and I'm doing all right. The scars are there, but they aren't open wounds.
I wish I could say that anything I experienced or didn't experience was the problem, but my parents certainly tried, many of the teachers tried, and nobody knew quite what to do with me. No blanket solution, or even combination, is going to "save" all the kids from having to go through this stuff.
If you are one of those kids: hang in there, it does get better. I do wish I'd had the Internet around when I was younger. It might have helped. Since you've got it, use it wisely. Or something. :)
In fact, I might just have to write one of those and fire it off to my ex-high school... and even the "special program" (a HS-college bridge) that I participated in.
Yep, even in a place that should have been Geek Heaven, some of this still went on. Definitely time to write some letters. Thanks for the inspiration.:)
I was homeschooled for four years, and I wish I had never gone back to public school. Pretty much for the "peer abuse" reasons that keep getting mentioned here.
Just for the record, both of my parents have degrees in education, so my experience might be a bit different. However, one of the things that is IMPORTANT to remember about homeschooling is that it is one more way for parents to stay more in touch with their kids (isn't this one of the things that was being recommended by "experts" when discussing the Littleton case??)
RE: teaching kids to read. Go back and read _To Kill a Mockingbird_... remember when Atticus gets in trouble for teaching his little girl to read the "wrong" way? *lol* I taught myself to read when I was two or so... I can't even remember not knowing how to read.
No, homeschooling isn't for every family. But for the fourth-generation geeks that I am likely to end up breeding, it's probably going to be a damn good idea.:)
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EXACTLY!!!!!
Then again, heretical as this probably sounds, I'm no great fan of the original SW either. I think it's a good movie, but I disagree with what it's been hyped into. Of course, being female, I'm outside of the original movie's intended audience anyway
Why my (male) friends expect me to be as enthusiastic as they are about a film series that has ONE major female character, who spends the entire movie gradually losing the spine that she at least SEEMED to have in the beginning
I wasn't talking about people like you. I was talking about the young tech-support people in the article. I have a great deal of respect for programmers, particularly ones who have been in the industry for a long time.
However, the end-user tech support industry is going to fall down and go boom as soon as people get clues. Meanwhile, it's a big old speculative bubble IMHO.
Sounds too familiar. Sounds like a lot of people I know, my boyfriend included (he declared a CS major originally for this exact reason).
... coffee? Maybe if we can go at 3 AM when I'm done with my latest project), and then act as if they're the smartest and most wonderful people in the universe.
The really scary ones are the ones whose lives are so focused on accumulating wealth that they justify it as "their favorite hobby that they happen to be getting paid for," let ALL other interests and human relationships dwindle (D&D? Sorry, got no time for that, have to go program
To be fair, I know tons of CS-folk who are nothing like this. Our local SCA group's fencing marshal, for one. But it hits too close to home for me both because of my father (which I posted about previously) and because of my boyfriend, who was well on his way to becoming one of the aforementioned arrogant antisocial cartoon-stereotype techies when what he wants to do and would do in a second if the money was there is run a bookstore.
"Well, I'll work insanely for ten years and then settle down and everything will be fine and I'll have enough." That's what he used to say, and it took a lot of persuasion on my part to convince him that those years don't come back.
(Not to mention, the only reason techies make as much money as they do NOW is because the older generation is scared of computers. Hell, I'm an end-user who only ever took one class in programming, useless Robbie the Robot-PASCAL, and my boss thinks I'm some kind of expert! He's not the first that I've worked for who thinks this, either. Once the computer-savvy become the majority of the workforce, this whole little speculative bubble is going to pop REAL fast. IMHO.)
Sorry. Got carried away. *steps off soapbox*
I certainly had the potential. A lot of people wonder why I didn't go into programming, or alternatively, why I'm not doing radio (my college obsession, which I was also damn good at).
The short answer is: I didn't want to end up like my father. OK, so he isn't in IT as such, but he's the business and management systems professor at a community college who knows how all the computers work.
Don't get me wrong. I love my dad, and I respect his dedication to his work. But he got obsessive. He started having to fix everyone's computer who asked. People in other departments at his college started coming to him for help because they had done silly things like somehow deleting COMMAND.COM files accidentally. The computer was, and is, his "other woman." It took a toll on my parents' marriage, on my relationship with him, and it is now taking a toll on his health. He's been in and out of the hospital for the past two years with stress-related illnesses.
I'd rather stay a temp-services secretary for the rest of my life than do that to myself. I'm just hoping I don't go through my mother's side of this (my boyfriend's a CS major, though he's thinking about switching to some other field and just doing a CS minor).
One of my favorite books. And yes, it makes much more sense as a mother/son metaphor than as a husband/wife metaphor. Sheesh, why reduce everything to sex?
And the radical-feminist (I make the distinction because I consider myself a feminist, yet disagree with what follows) "criticism" of this is so much tripe. Much like the people who want Huck Finn banned because "it's racist!" Um, the POINT is that this is an unhealthy situation for all parties involved, no? Silly critics who are perfectly willing to read evil WhiteMalePatriarchialConspiracy into everything and yet are unwilling to see the satire that is often being done to said "conspiracy."
R.I.P, Shel. You'll be missed.
"Bloody nuisance" is exactly what spam is.
Let's see
Bloody nuisance, indeed.
34th? Not bad for a city that's supposedly falling apart
*LOL*
Actually, no, he didn't have to work. He was one of the lucky ones.
I just fear for the sanity of people who get in line at midnight to buy toys when it isn't even Christmas season.
I couldn't agree more.
(And my boyfriend wonders why I don't want to live in the suburbs, EVER AGAIN. Geez, given that when we get around to having kids, they'll be third-generation geeks
I'll certainly agree on the bright young men point. One of my good friends, who would be a wonderful teacher, won't risk it because he's gay and all it would take is ONE spiteful student or parent to bring his life crashing down around his head.
I'm not sure I agree on the tenure point. The idea behind tenure is a very important one, and I'd be worried about the consequences for my father and people like him if there wasn't a tenure system in place. People who are very good teachers, who sometimes say things that the administration does not want to hear, would be in monstrous amounts of trouble.
Unfortunately, having had some bad teachers that couldn't be easily gotten rid of, there are too many times when tenure does do more harm than good. Theoretically, bad teachers should be sniffed out before they even come up for tenure, of course, but this doesn't always happen.
The tenure system doesn't need to be trashed so much as changed. It should still be possible to get rid of teachers for incompetence and/or emotional damage to students (and in theory, it is anyhow), but not for simply holding unpopular views. Were it not for tenure, any teacher who dared stand up against Geek Profiling would be screwed right now.
Think about it.
OK kiddies, enough. My boyfriend works for a toy store, and they had to open at midnight to sell Star Wars toys. The lines reached across the plaza! This is ridiculous. All you people who want your stuff to become collectors' items are in for a disappointment, because too many people have the same idea.
And another thing: overhyped movies are always a disappointment. Remember The Crying Game? I can't be the only one who figured out the "big secret" 20 minutes into the movie without already knowing about it.
Ignore the hype, go see it, and have fun. Don't expect it to be an earthshattering experience, though. I don't, but then again, I still have trouble understanding the hype about a cliched western set in space with lots of special effects.
*shrug*
Actually, the kind of teacher I don't want anywhere near anyone's kids is the kind that is there solely to prove s/he knows more than the kids s/he is teaching. Those people are scary.
I'm not saying money can't be a concern at all -- hell, everyone has to make a living. But a doctor who became a doctor because of how much money doctors make is not someone I want taking care of me or my family. A doctor who got into the profession out of interest in the function of the human body or concern for others is likely to be a much better doctor, ya think?
And no, when I have kids, I will certainly NOT hire some kid who is only babysitting because s/he is too young for a real job. I will be interviewing all sitters first. May as well get them used to it. *grin*
In a world where people will pay hundreds of dollars for Tickle Me Elmo and thousands for a Beanie Babie, anything that someone considers valuable for WHATEVER misguided reason will eventually be worth lots of money.
Look at Magic cards. I refuse to play because I don't have that kind of money to devote to a game, and the "good" decks seem to require large investments. If I'm playing against some rich kid who has a thousand-dollar deck, I don't know if I've got much chance.
Pity that it's intruded into the online world, though.
OK, that's not literally what you said. Close enough.
There's a bit of a problem with that. Namely, people aren't going to care HOW good you are
I don't know if licensing would fix the problem or not
*steps on soapbox*
(Sorry, I've had this argument with my boyfriend often enough that he's slowly starting to believe I am right
OK, I am willing to grant you that the programmed atmosphere of your average school sucks a great deal. No problems there.
However, there is such a thing as cultural literacy. And I'm one of those crazy people who believes that it is somewhat important. I have had people try to convince me of silly things like "the term of a senator is two years, the term of a representative is four years." WHAT?!
And you'd be surprised at how relevant some of those "long dead writers" are. Not to mention how entertaining they can be -- one of my professors at Geneseo told our Chaucer class that it was his favorite course to teach because it gave him an excuse to get paid for telling dirty jokes.
I agree that those who didn't do well in school are not necessarily less intelligent. But guess what? In the Real World(tm), you don't always get to do exactly what you want, either. Learning to make the best of this is a VERY important skill for the rest of your life.
There's also the small matter of reading being a valuable tool for teaching people how to write. One of my biggest problems, personally, with the subset of computer geek that the person I'm responding to seems to belong to is their inability to explain what they're doing to the rest of the world without resorting to mass quantities of jargon. Sometimes I have to wonder if even THEY know what they're talking about
Quite simple, really. Frankly, it won't be the students who make the decisions about which schools they end up at. It'll be the parents. And that's a problem for two reasons:
:(
1. The students who want to be in the higher level school, even though the parents couldn't care less. Probably most likely to be a problem in the inner city -- IF the stereotype is correct, something I am not at all sure about. Likely to be somewhat of a problem anywhere with apathetic parents. (read: everywhere)
2. The parents who want their little darlings to have only the best, when said little darlings are apathetic at best and exactly what the school was designed to stop at worst. Remember "all the children are above average"? There are way too many parents out there who use their kids' accomplishments as their own pedestal.
And a bunch of kids who don't want to learn is exactly what you don't want in a school like this.
I like the principle of magnet schools, and we have a good program of them where I currently live (Rochester, NY), BUT it would be a Very Good Thing to somehow ensure that the student was making the decision about where to go, NOT the parent. And given that high school students are generally minors, I'm not sure that this will ever be guaranteed. More's the pity, too.
Well, would YOU want to be a garbage man? They deserve the pay they get, if not more. Think about it -- a dirty, smelly job, that has a high risk of injury
I'll be flamed into oblivion for even suggesting this, of course, but I still say that many computer professionals are quite overpaid.
And you know what? Teachers aren't THAT horribly underpaid, either. I know; my father is one. And I somehow got through college with no student loans, and was given a car when I graduated.
Quite frankly, the people who are "in it for the money" are the LAST ones I want anywhere near my children, when I have them.
*raises hand*
...
... all of it was "school" for me. The down side was that most of the area homeschoolers fell into one of two camps, neither of which we fit: the "We are true Christians who don't want our kids taught *gasp* sex education!" camp, and what I called the "homeschooling anarchists" camp -- those who didn't seem to care if their kids EVER learned to, say, read. So, for various reasons, I decided I wanted to try going back to school. We sat down with the superintendent (who by now was a family friend) and that led to ...
... if you can't handle this, it's your problem." My best friend was thrown up against a wall by this person and told "I'm going to f**k you before I graduate if it kills us both." This is NOT just flirting, and yet it was blamed on the girl's perceived lack of social skills. I had a similar problem, went to talk to the aforementioned clueless counselor, and she broke confidentiality on me. The aforementioned jock spent the next few weeks threatening my life. NOTHING was done, even when this happened in front of teachers. And I had to see a lot of the person who was threatening me -- he was in choir, in band, and in the school play with me. I think it was one of the other actors who finally got him to leave me alone. Ironically enough, the same person who gave me all this trouble later defended me from some other folks who insisted on running their mouths at me.
...
...
;)
:) I've got a job, I've got a fellow-geek boyfriend (though I could just as easily have a girlfriend *grin* but I'm content), and I'm doing all right. The scars are there, but they aren't open wounds.
Hello, my name is A.J. and I'm a geek. I learned to read when I was two years old, I am decidedly unathletic (though that is improving a little now that I've discovered SCA fencing), and in a lot of ways I was a "mini-adult" starting when I was five or so. Recipe for instant disaster when attempting to mix with other kids. And did I mention that I was tall enough to tower over most of my class? That's no help, either.
My parents, and the local school system, tried every academic solution available, and nothing seemed to completely fix the problems I was having. Hellmouth didn't end for me until I started attending a state college at the age of not-quite-sixteen.
Here were the steps:
1. I went to a Montessori preschool and kindergarten. Problems galore here, much to everyone's surprise. My original preschool teacher decided I was autistic because I couldn't tie my shoes. She was later fired for cracking a ruler over some kid's head. Kindergarten was better but not great -- my teacher informed my mother that I knew all my vowels but not consenants because we hadn't learned them yet. At this point, I'd been reading for two and a half years!!
2. Catholic school, first and second grade. First grade was wonderful thanks to a teacher who understood what was up with me and let me read out of the fourth grade reading book. Second grade was horrible. The teacher once asked my mother, "Well, don't you want your daughter to be NORMAL?" She, having been the "class brain" herself, had the sense to respond: "NO! Not when normal is six hours of television a day!" This woman then became the principal, which led to
3. Homeschooling from 3rd-6th grade. This probably is what gave me something of a foundation of sanity. I was free to follow my interests: mathematical matrices, the history of France, environmental science, horseback riding, baking cakes
4. 8th-9th Grade: Public Jr-Sr Hellmouth. My experiences were textbook-case Hellmouth.
It started when I pulled an admittedly silly stunt to fit in, and indirectly caused a fistfight between two girls. I was considered "maladjusted" as a result, and sent to a counselor. She told me that sarcasm never solves anything, when it was the only defense I HAD against certain subsets of the school population. This woman did nothing to help my self-esteem, and actually made things worse. And, of course, gossip got around that I was talking to a counselor, which helped NOTHING.
Lots of other little (and not-so-little) incidents -- I nearly had my bike stolen by a bunch of guys higher on the social food chain, I had my French tests blatantly copied (and the teacher did nothing about it), and I had a choir director make my life miserable because I'm an alto and her definition of alto is "chicken soprano." She wouldn't let me try out for All-County Choir, and in a later competition, singing one of what would have been the tryout songs, I scored higher than someone who made the damn choir. Was I angry? You betcha.
Most significant of them all, a particular jock who was in 12th grade when I was in 9th, and decided that the 7th-9th grade girls were his harem. Only a couple of us "geek girls" complained about this, and the response? "He's just flirting
I'd had as much as I could take, and thankfully I had an out
5. A high school-college bridge program, housed at a private women's college. Here, I thought, there would finally be people like me. But "people like me" still turned out to be rare, and overall, the experience was a disappointment. The kids were bright, sure, but too many of them were also filthy rich and had the attitudes to match. To them, this was just a super-elite private school. One of them loved leaving little messages like "you should be dead, you f**king dyke!" on my dormroom answering machine. I knew who was doing it, but had no proof, and the administration there didn't believe me.
I was lucky there -- I did have wonderful teachers, and I got out of most of the "required" classes due to some summer coursework I had completed. The "traditional" college students were generally good to me, and I was able to "pass" as one of them most of the time, even though I was not-quite-14 when I started there. But eventually I decided enough was enough -- the teenage silliness of "I need a man!" got on my nerves, as did the drunken "men" who came to visit the dorm and pulled a water fountain out of the wall at 3 AM, flooding my entire floor and mildewing the lounge carpet. Also, the school's program in my area of interest was quite weak. It was time to move on
6. I transferred to a small-ish state college. This was good as well as bad. After a year of strangeness and only a few friends, I found "my" people. The Real Friends I'd been hearing about all my life. But this, too, had its downside. Since I enjoyed something of real popularity for the first time in my life, my academic life suffered for it. I didn't see it that way at the time (and part of the problem was my tendency to bite off more than I could chew), and I made it through without flunking out, but I wish I had "applied myself" a bit more. Too late now, of course.
I've been out of school for two years now, and I want to go back, if I can find a grad English program in the area that will have me.
I wish I could say that anything I experienced or didn't experience was the problem, but my parents certainly tried, many of the teachers tried, and nobody knew quite what to do with me. No blanket solution, or even combination, is going to "save" all the kids from having to go through this stuff.
If you are one of those kids: hang in there, it does get better. I do wish I'd had the Internet around when I was younger. It might have helped.
Since you've got it, use it wisely. Or something.
:)
Very nice. Very, very nice.
In fact, I might just have to write one of those and fire it off to my ex-high school
Yep, even in a place that should have been Geek Heaven, some of this still went on. Definitely time to write some letters. Thanks for the inspiration.
I was homeschooled for four years, and I wish I had never gone back to public school. Pretty much for the "peer abuse" reasons that keep getting mentioned here.
... remember when Atticus gets in trouble for teaching his little girl to read the "wrong" way? *lol* I taught myself to read when I was two or so ... I can't even remember not knowing how to read.
:)
Just for the record, both of my parents have degrees in education, so my experience might be a bit different. However, one of the things that is IMPORTANT to remember about homeschooling is that it is one more way for parents to stay more in touch with their kids (isn't this one of the things that was being recommended by "experts" when discussing the Littleton case??)
RE: teaching kids to read. Go back and read _To Kill a Mockingbird_
No, homeschooling isn't for every family. But for the fourth-generation geeks that I am likely to end up breeding, it's probably going to be a damn good idea.