I'm glad there is still awesome people out there and thriving. I'm 25 and I still feel like the weird kid sometimes.
"That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
91–100 of 206 posts
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#92The author's observation about high school is exactly why my kids, by default, will be home schooled. If they decide they want to go to public or private school at some point, I'll let them. Unlike a lot of kids that end up getting bullied, they'll know that their attendance is completely optional. I'm not looking to shelter them from the real world, only the fake miniature society that exists at school.
While I understand your point of view based on this one observation, I think this is a terrible idea if you look at the big picture. Whether they get bullied or not, high school is an extremely important time for kids to gain social skills and learn how to deal with people. Dealing with people is one of the most important skills you can have, period. And that often means dealing with people that are being dicks, and…
The thing is: school is nothing like the real world. It teaches you how to deal with school.
School is a very weird, twisted little society where none of the work has any real point, there's no source of purpose other than pure social approval, and everybody is either the same age or an authority figure.
The strategies you use for dealing with difficult people in the real world are completely different from what you have to do in school. Same goes for how to find friends, or how to decide what to do.
That's precisely why everyone is always saying "it will get better after you get out of high school". Because the conditions in school are not at all representative of the rest of your life.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#93I'm about as asocial and celebratory of diversity as they come, and I love this essay, especially the conversational style. But I'd be careful not to take this argument too far into sophistry. In school people clan and desperately look for some identity to copy. This leads to all the terrible social behavior you see in most secondary and high school in the U.S. Somebody calling you "weird" can really be a badge of ho…
What you described is the true meaning of hipster. Someone who does something because it's uncool or weird.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#94I wish someone explained it to me like this, back then.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#95You can have all of the upvotes they'll let me give you. It's amazing being "all grown up" and looking out and realizing that highschool and all of the shit that happens while growing up has almost no connection to the real world.
Isn't the 'real world' relative? To a kid in high school, that is the real world. To a grown man among his peers at work, that is the real world. I never understood telling kids that high school wasn't the real world. I can understand telling them it gets better (and it does, I know) but to try to mask certain stages of their lives as not real doesn't seem genuine.
Maybe "the real world" isn't the right term, but high school certainly is an isolated, controlled, and artificial environment compared to the rest of the outside world. The kids are locked down and have little to no freedom and little to no control over their environment. Also, some things that are socially acceptable in high school are NOT socially acceptable in an adult workplace.
In that sense, high school is not "the real world", because high school students don't have the same freedom or the same tools to deal with obnoxious people as they otherwise would in the adult world. In "the real world", you have legal recourse if someone in your workplace is harassing you. You can get a restraining order. You can talk to your H.R. department. You can sue your workplace and/or the person if you've taken the above steps and nothing has been done. You can quit your job and get a new one. In high school you have none of those luxuries. Unless the harassment is extreme, there is very little likelihood of getting a restraining order against another student. Furthermore, getting a restraining order is not something a high schooler can do on their own (they would need help from their parents). You can talk to the administration at the school, but they don't have the same power, nor the same incentive to avoid lawsuits (although this is changing) as a company's H.R. department. Also, many school administrators are still of the mindset that "kids will be kids" when it comes to bullying/harassment, and are unwilling to do anything about the issue. Finally, a high schooler cannot simply quit high school like an adult can quit his or her job. Again, it involves their parents's help.
That is the difference between high school and "the real world". In the real world, harassment is a serious legal issue; in high school, it's just "kids will be kids". In the real world, you have at least a modicum of control over your environment; in high school, kids have no control. In the real world, actions have consequences; in high school, apparently, they do not.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#96Nice, that will help him alot. As somebody from Europe, we always see these typical American High Schools and think it can really be like this. Sure they overdo it in movies but I have read a fair amount of blogpost and reddit comments that discribe the same problem. There is grouping and groupe think too in Schools here but not in the same extrem way. It could be selection bios on my part but lets look at the diffre…
I have a very similar view. One thing that seems to be specific for US high schools is that there are relatively clearly defined and isolated groups. In the school I attended (in the Czech Rep), there were vague / fuzzy groups but basically everyone was friends with everyone.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I chalk it up to the fact that what’s perfectly normal within a group of friends can seem harsh from the outside. He’s probably just accustomed to making jokes like that with Jay, so sees no issue putting it on his blog.
"Perfectly normal within friends." What is perfectly normal within friends can still be unwanted, even if it was okay at first. It's why I don't like to encourage jokey insults like this any more. Sure at first I was okay with homophobic comments, but after a while it turns from being playful with friends into hurtful and annoying. I definitely agree with StavrosK, it does feel very off to me.
Well, yes. I did find the comment in extremely poor taste, but I also don’t pretend to have enough information to assess it further. Nothing to do but suspend judgement and give a measured response.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I understand your point of view based on this one observation, I think this is a terrible idea if you look at the big picture. Whether they get bullied or not, high school is an extremely important time for kids to gain social skills and learn how to deal with people. Dealing with people is one of the most important skills you can have, period. And that often means dealing with people that are being dicks, and…
"I understand that sheltering them from the real world is not your motivation for this opinion, but it is the reality of what will happen. Your kids will miss out on a huge period of personal growth and a large expansion of their experience dealing with other people which they will never be able to get back later." It is not necessarily the case that being homeschooled automatically equates to a child that has been s…
You seriously just cited something from the Discovery Institute, a group that believes a book trumps scientific evidence? They have a strong agenda that includes homeschooling. The article you cited is not research, it's an internally created, non-peer reviewed meta review. Not exactly high quality material.
I'm not saying your argument is necessarily wrong, just that you found some of the worst possible material to support it.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#99I like the essay as a whole, but there is one clue that struck me.
"Then one day, Mike got tired of my bullshit and said those words to me. "That's why you don't have any friends," he said at very high volume. He deserved to say it -- I'd just told him to go fuck himself when he tried to explain why my girlfriend at the time was screwing someone behind my back. I called him every name in the book."
It's not being weird that will make you a pariah; being an asshole does.
Re: "That's Why You Don't Have Any Friends."
#100The author's observation about high school is exactly why my kids, by default, will be home schooled. If they decide they want to go to public or private school at some point, I'll let them. Unlike a lot of kids that end up getting bullied, they'll know that their attendance is completely optional. I'm not looking to shelter them from the real world, only the fake miniature society that exists at school.
It doesn't necessarily help. I speak from experience: I was homeschooled and it was terrible. I didn't learn the 101 little tricks to make interacting with frustrating people that little bit easier, I didn't learn to empathize with people less smart than me and I didn't develop the social intelligence that I believe is vital for long-term success. Any time I had to interact with anyone I felt terrible and awkward and…
I was not home schooled (I'm not sure such a thing exists in Sweden) but before I started school, my grandparents took care of me while my parents went to work, so I didn't go to daycare or anything like that. Even these days into middle age I'm clearly more "socially challenged" than most people. I remember school being quite a shock to me, and I do think that it would have been useful to be exposed to more kids at a young age.
So I guess what I'm feeling is that school isn't just for learning stuff, it's for learning to live in a world that's full of people, most very different from you, and where knowing how to interact easily with them probably is just as important as learning any particular "school stuff". Against this background, I'm fundamentally skeptic that the concept of home schooling really would be an overall positive in someone's life.