Nirvana,
Unfortunately, I went through my school years with a terrible attitude. I was kicked out of my first school in the UK at the age of 4 and things didn't improve much after that. In elementary school, I was the self-appointed class clown and my school day followed pretty much the same schedule every day:
1) Arrive without homework (or with a few pages scribbled on the bus or cribbed from others)
2) Begin disrupting the class immediately
3) Get kicked out to stand in the hall
4) Read book brought from home in the hall, goof with anyone else passing through
5) Be reluctantly readmitted
6) Repeat step 2
7) Get detention
8) Get sent to the Principal's office
9) Hear lecture #4,405,433 (none of which was paid attention to)
10) Repeat step 4, except this time in the principals office
11) Bell Rings, go to detention
Whenever I returned home from school on time, my mother immediately suspected I had skipped detention, which was invariably the case.
Unfortunately, my High School career wasn't too terribly different, and my report cards didn't disappoint my parents, they made them extremely angry.
Had my mother not gone through the agonizing process of teaching me to read at age 3, I wouldn't have learned anything at all. As it is, my mathematics skills are at best rudimentary.
All of this was largely due to the fact that I firmly believed the following:
1) I was the smartest and most important individual on the planet and I already knew everything worth knowing.
2) My teachers were the stupidest and most contemptible people on the planet and knew nothing worth knowing.
3) School was an evil conspiracy designed to stop me from having fun, which I was determined to circumvent.
4) Rules were for the weak and less important
5) School was absolutely unnecessary, because once people learned how much smarter I was than them, they would be falling all over themselves to give me a high paying job.
It wasn't until University (which I got into because of my test scores, not my academic record which was appalling) that I began to find out that several of my assumptions might be flawed. This produced a rather nasty depression, which I attempted to counter via drugs, booze, and a generally depraved life-style. After I graduated from University, having squandered the opportunity to get a really excellent education, in favor of simply doing the bare minimum necessary to get my MA and indulge my self-destructive habits. I found that my generally crappy attitude and lifestyle not only didn't work in school, it also didn't work in the workplace and that they were quite willing to fire you rather than put up with antics.
It really wasn't until I became a Christian and began taking seminary classes part-time that I ever began studying or taking education seriously, at that point I could have wept at the time and opportunities I had wasted. I had been standing on the verge of vast treasurehouse for many years and had foolishly determined my time would be better spent frolicking in the cesspool.
Since that time, I've had to commit myself to reading and studying at twice the rate I would have otherwise. I wasted the opportunity to become a real scholar who might have been a benefit to others in the academic community, and instead will have to be content with being thoroughly mediocre when it comes to academia. Plus, my math skills are still pathetic, long division makes me sweat.
Please remember that in academia, no amount of natural talent or intelligence will entirely make up for a poor attitude towards study and education, the skills you can potentially aquire or fail to aquire now will have a lasting impact on your future life and work. Believe it or not, a failure to push yourself and endure "the stress" can result in life-long regrets. There are few sentences as sad as those that begin with "I wish I had..."
On the other hand, cheerfully submitting to a process you will later realize wasn't nearly as difficult as you thought, really will bring life-long benefits to you, your family, you vocation, and potentially even the human race.
Persevere in this!
- SEAGOON
