Fri Mar 21, 2008 6:32 pm by Holden Caulfield
There is a similar thread already in the Your Story forum.
In my case, I quit school after 9th grade. It was a public school. Because of all the educational gaps I had for going to True School earlier (where we learned nothing) and for periods of going to course full-time instead of school, I could never keep up with the other kids and never even bothed with high school. My self-esteem was so shot at that time, I often considered suicide and came close a few times but changed my mind in the last minute. Luckily, I discovered music and making my own music and DJing saved me.
I was never encouraged properly to do well in school by my parents, I was never encouraged to read privately. Not that my parents purposely negelcted me, they were just completely gobbled up by Co$ and had serious financial problems and just had too little time to spend with me. I cut classes regularly and when one of the schools I went to wanted to conduct an investigation to find out to why I was failing in each subject, my parents were furious at me for drawing attention to myself, and I was ABSOLUTELY not allowed to mention that they were Scientologists. I was afraid Social Services would take me to foster care so I complied. In hindsight, I think foster care may not have been the worst idea, my parents really needed a wake-up call.
So when I was turned 16 I never went back to school and kept going with the music. Looking back, I'd say the lack of a proper education is my one Achilles' Heel. When I was about 24 I finnally realised that my life wasn't going anywhere and that I no longer wanted to be a member or in any way be affiliated with Scientology. I stopped making music and went to a college prep-school for a year and then entered University - a terrible shock for me. Suddenly I was in an envrionment where most kids came from stable homes, had encouraging parents, stable economy and had been properly educated. The first two years were hell for me, and I even took a semester off to go travelling inbetween. It became shockingly clear to me how damaged I was intellectually and socially.
Now I've managed to make up for most of the basic stuff. I'm still terrible in math, physics and chemistry but better in the social sciences. My grades tell me that I'm by no means stupid, but I have to work twice as hard for them and I'm a slow reader. But so are other students, so I'm not alone in that, but the lack of a proper schooling has still taken its toll on my social skills. I never got to go through all that normal stuff kids go through in school. Never got to have a favorite teacher that I would go out of my way to impress, or go to Prom, or play in a school sports team, or have a graduation party with the family.
My parents still to this day take the Scientology stance that it was my own fault for failing in school. They say I had MU's, which of course I did because the Scientology school hadn't educated me properly. We still have huge arguments about it and I really don't se us ever seeing eye-to-eye on that one. My schooling turned out the way it did indirectly because of their involvement with the Co$ and directly because of their compliance to the Scientology beliefs. Even though they are both off-lines and are getting more and more critical of So$, they're still in denial about how them being Scientologists has affected their kids.
Now I'm hungry for knowledge constantly. I've decided I want to be a journalist because that's what a journalist does - gathers knowledge. The drag is it that I'm 30 and most people in my classes are 10 years younger and already have connections, etc, while I more often than not feel like I'm from some other planet.
I guess I just have to live with it. I've got a couple of years left of school before I have a Masters and (hopefully) can get a decent paying job that I like. Mostly I've realised that I'm not socially functioning the way I need to and I've still never had any serious relationship. I've only recently begun to consider that I'm suffering from depression (yeah, that phenomenon doesn't exist in Scientology and you'd be surprised how strong denial can be) and probably have been for 15 or more years. I'ts just gone on and on and I've never really adressed it.
Scientology, if anything, has been the cause of it. Scientology destroys lives.
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."