Schools the life for me??

I have been thinking lately about returning to school and starting some meaningful tertiary study. I have always found an interest in Psychology but never thought i had the smarts to go through with my interests. But over the last few years that pull and desire to follow this interest has become stronger. I can not help tho, to recall my dreaded school days and lack of scholastic abilities. These thoughts have been and still are my barrier i must over come in order to pursue these desires to study. I thought i might share my school adventures to maybe help me get over my lack of self worth in this area.

My earliest memories of schooling was going to Kindergarten. This is where i meet one of my best friends Sina. We ended up staying friends up until 7th form - last year of high school. We still sometimes talk now but we have gone down very different paths in life and have drifted apart.
My memories of kindy are of painting, shadow puppets and hiding up the tree during clean up time.
My first teacher was very scary. I can not even recall her name only but to call her "Witch Lady" which was our endearing name we used for her. Good thing i was born in November and only had to endure her for a few short weeks till the school year was over. I do however also remember seeing all my kindy mates sitting under her wrath as well.
The next important thing that happened in my school life was that i was subject to J3. For those that are unfamiliar with the old way of school years, i will enlighten you on the order.
Primary school
- New entrants (which you did if you where born after march)
- Junior1
- J2
- J3 or Standard1 (some unlucky people did both)
- Std2
- Std3
- Std4
Intermediate school
- Form 1
- Form 2
High school
- 3rd form
- 4th form
- 5th form
- 6th form
- 7th form

Although i was not unlucky enough to do both J3 and Std1, i still knew that the smart people where never left behind in the junior part of school. When i did move into the senior sector of my primary school i went direct to Std2. Which would have been good, but it was over shadowed by my perception of the class set up. Often in our classes we would have mixed years. Std1 mixed Std2, Std2 mixed Std3, Std3 mixed Std4. I was forever the higher year in my classes. This made me feel like i was stupid. I longed to be the lesser year so i would feel smart.
Also as i journeyed up the ranks of primary school, i noticed that the songs we sung in assembly became rather babyish. It's not that i outgrew the songs, its that the music teacher ceased to sing those "grown up" songs and replaced them with ones i thought should be in pre-school. There is one that has stuck in my head because i loathed it. I have forgotten most of the words but still remember the tune. The words that i despised the greatest have never left me..
"yum yum gobble gobble crunch crunch crunch, i've got a lovely bone to munch"
These words should never be sung by 10 year olds in school assembly. I already felt stupid by always being in the higher rank of the class, and now they make us sing baby songs. Nice.

Then came Intermediate. Form1, I was put in an average class. Thats fine by me because i was never made to feel stupid. But alas, this was the year i become gravely ill with cancer and spent 5 months in hospital. On my return back to school, in the second year of Intermediate, i had the privilege of choosing my teacher. I had unfortunately chosen a teacher who did not understand my situation and i felt showed little or no mercy towards my recovery. This year holds some rather untoward emotions and situations that even to this day brings tears to my eyes. I often light-heartedly amuse myself about how i can easily talk about my dance with death with little or no sorrow, But bring up the year after and my integration into life and the tears start to flow.

High school. Need i say more. I am yet to find someone with only the fondest memories of this turbulent affair. I was shoved in the "dumb ass" class even tho according to the teachers "there is no streaming". But when you are 3rd form sitting in Math class, the teacher hands you a colour the squares picture where if you colour all boxes with half fractions it revels a picture, your mind starts to put its own puzzle together to revel that there is in fact a "dumb" class. Just to add to the torment, there was a stream of questions from the class to the teacher "Miss is 3/4 half? Miss is 5/8 half? Miss is 2/6 half?". How on earth do they not know about fractions? Isn't that primary school learning?. In my class i was dubbed "brainy", this bugged me because i knew that i was not brainy, it was in fact that the rest of the class was morons.
To sum up High School it was a stream of useless teachers mixed with ones that i swear hated me with a pinch of being tossed to the side. Its no wonder that when it came time for my youngest sister to go to High School mum said to her "Choose what ever school you want to go to, even private if you like, just not Avonside girls" My other sister also had troubles while she was there. I will never forget 6th form Math. I was having a lot of difficulty trying to understand everything. I had an average test mark of 30%. My parents payed for a tutor 2 hours a week. My test marks suddenly jumped to an average of 75%. Go figure.
I also do not have School Cert. English.
My Art History teacher in 7th form kept telling me i can't write essays. She would tell me how i should be writing them, so i would do it how she wanted, but still she would tell me i didn't know how to write them. I suppose it didn't help that she was actually the Japaneses teacher who the school decided to have her teach Art History because she took a paper on it at Uni.

I like doing personality tests. Ive done a few. Every time i do one about my type of learning i come out highly kinesthetic, which means i learn by doing. Maybe thats why i failed so miserably at school. Or it could have been a mixture of both learning style and useless teachers, who knows. All i know is that im terrified of going back to study because i do not want to fail miserably again. But i have this urge and desire to learn.

Another personality test i have indulged in is the test of "Introvert or extrovert". I seem to come up smack in the middle. 50% on either side. Go figure. But thats a whole new post all together.