Schooldays - Polls

There was a kid who joined my school in about 1998, aged 15, as a refugee from Afghanistan. He claimed him and his brothers had fought the Russians in the civil war. Our history teacher, and therefore the whole class, openly ridiculed him as the Russian war in Afghanistan was 4 years before he was born. But years later thinking about it’s not impossible that he did actually take part in some kind of combat not necessarily against russians but maybe that’s how it was framed to him or something and he was only a child or something I dunno, just saying I feel bad and a bit angry in retrospect at the teacher (who I otherwise thought was the best teacher I ever had) for being so glib about it.

I mean I guess most of them will be comfortably well off with young kids and a huge mortgage, happily voting tory and I’d absolutely hate their lives, but i bet they are happy

There wasn’t really much of a divide in my school - the people in the sports teams also tended to be from the higher stream classes. It was the same for those into music/drama, although there wasn’t much crossover between sport and music people.

I was in the starting line ups for the Rugby, Basketball and Cricket teams, in a few bands and I think was in the top 5 in the year in GCSEs.

Little side story: In one of the first year 7 rugby practices, we had to tackle one of the year 9s. I was chosen to do it first and floor the giant. a few weeks later, the bullies came knocking, calling me hamster cheeks, but one of them turned to another one and said, “wouldn’t mess with him, I’ve seen him floor (whoever it was), he’s alright, him.” ended up being loose head, with two of them in the front row, though was never really friends with any of them.

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I think the popular people mainly sell things and go to Dubai a lot.

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Remembered a horrifying moment where my quite odd history teacher (he used to cry when talking about Mary Queen of Scots being imprisoned) explained that the part of Rasputin’s eventual murder where he was supposedly shot multiple times at close range and survived was perfectly plausible. Because, he said with a slight grin and a perfectly pleasant tone of voice, that his sister (blurring for violence) was a teacher at Dunblane during the massacre and the same thing had happened to her and she was “fine”.

Just… no words.

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:grimacing::grimacing::grimacing:

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oh right yeah i got this a lot

Free periods in sixth form (multiple option poll)

  • Do all your homework so that your evenings are free
  • Play football
  • Go around to a mate’s house in a group and play computer games (SWOS, in particular)
  • Wander into town to go shopping
  • Sit in the park smoking
  • Other (please specify)

0 voters

Other - just go home for the day and not bother going back

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we used to play Doom 2 on multi-player mode in the common room computer room bit. either that or we’d do some weird stock exchange music thing online or suttin. oooh or liero, which was like worms but multiplayer and online. then we’d get told off

Pretty much gave up on my A-levels halfway through upper sixth. Really got to hating my school - I was a scholarship kid at a private school full of Thatcherite-offspring scumbags with massive entitlement issues.

Basically failed them all as a result, and why I didn’t go to university until I was 28. But that worked out really well for me??

we had a teacher called Mr Eggs

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Other:

  • go to the cafeteria and draw graphs with my friends of who in our year group had got off with who
  • read about football disasters on Wikipedia
  • work on Nanowrimo or the school magazine I was editor of
  • have driving lessons

We were only allowed to properly leave school during free periods once a week on a specific day. They were called exeats

Mondays were always for driving into town, calling into the record shops to see what new releases there were, before doing a drive by at Maccy Ds making sure lot ask for lots of random sauceage and racing back to school with numerous holy god moments.

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Other - sit in the park smoking AND drinking :+1:

A-Levels, if you did them

  • Stayed on at the same school
  • Went to a different school
  • Sixth form college

0 voters

There was an illegal poker school in the common room for lower 6th that the prohi feds kept trying to shut down, life always found a way though.

Depends on what people mean. It might be easy to pass everything without doing much work but I’m pretty sure it’s not easy to get straight A*s in everything.

I think A-Levels suit people who are really good at a some subjects rather than people who are broadly good at everything. Some people at my school who were not particularly high achievers really thrived in A-Level because they picked subjects which were right for them, I guess because they knew what they were good at, because they knew what they were bad at…

I preferred the variety of subjects at GCSE, I actually liked every subject I did. Then made some absolutely terrible choices at A-Level and had to do a shitload of resits before I got to uni. Basically had a ‘gap yah’ which was devoted to resits, it was ridiculous and I felt like an idiot but I did well in the end so I don’t care.

I found A-Levels harder than uni tbh.

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