Friday, September 2, 2016

When things are rough.

So, I'm in high school. And the first week isn't over yet but I'm already freaking out. You see I'm from The Netherlands and the school system is a little different here. We start at age 4  in grade 1 all the way to grade 8 when most people are about the age of 11/12 (depends on your birthday) . and then we go to "middle school". That's the exact translation at least. 'Middelbare School' look it up if you want to. and we go from year 1 to year 6. Most people are 18 when they graduate.
I'm what people call 'an early student'. You start school the day you turn 4 and most of the time you have to do grade 1 over, because you missed most of the year. My birthday is on October 17th. So I I had the choice to go to grade 2 or do the year again.  I chose to go to grade 2 so I'm always in a class where people are a year older than I am, sometimes 2. It's not only hard on a intelligence level. but also because a lot of the times they are just more developed. Especially this school year, you have to start working for yourself. Teacher won't explain everything anymore, You can't just fake being sick so you can miss a lesson you don't like. Karma is going to come back and bite you in the ass when you don't have a clue what the teacher is talking about the next lesson, and of course the rest of the class doesn't really know how to explain how to do it because they don't really understand either.
So generally it gets pretty hard.
I don't know if anyone else had this, but sometimes I just feel like everything is going wrong. I don't like not knowing what's going on. The moment in class where I just don't understand I start panicking, I feel like suddenly the whole year is going to fail and I'm not going to pass the year. (In the Netherlands you sometimes have to do a year again or go to another "level", I don't really know how to explain how levels work. I don't even think it's called levels in English I just don't know a better translation.)
But actually everything is going to be alright. It's just one lesson. You can ask your parents or a classmate who does understand, you can even get a tutor. Don't worry.
But despite everything I just said, I still panic .
Last night when I came home from field hockey practice, My family had already ate so I just ate at the dining table alone while my mom was doing something on her phone next to me to keep me company. She asked me how everything was going at school and I just gave her the standard answer, 'How was school?'
'Yeah, fine. Not anything special'
And I just left it with that.
But then suddenly I felt the urge to talk to someone about how I actually felt.
So I started talking, really talking.
'Well sometimes it does go a little fast in the lesson.'
'O, really which one?'
'Maths, science, sometimes other lessons. It's just really hard because apparently we're supposed to do everything by ourselves and I just don't know how to deal with.'
'You know you can always ask one of your brothers right'
I started talking about it all, about the fact that I was always younger and this the year was where you kind of decide what you want to do later in your life and the panicky feelings that I'd been feeling in the class came back to me. I started crying.  We had a whole conversation that if I needed help I could just ask and stuff like that. But I'm the kind of person who tries to figure everything out on my own. And know I can always ask, but to me it feels like defeat and it makes me feel stupid.
But I just have to remind myself that not everything I do can be perfect.
-x- Caroline

No comments:

Post a Comment