<p>Shouldn’t be a big deal - try to maintain relationships with yoru teachers though.</p>
<p>maybe you should take a year off and return to school next year after you sort out whatever is wrong.</p>
<p>A friend’s son missed most of the school year with vague but persistent symptoms. Turns out they were Psycho-Emotional in origin. BTW, I’m not saying yours are Psycho-Emotional in origin, just relating this kid’s story.</p>
<p>Very bright boy - Merit Finalist, advanced work in math and sciences, interesting EC’s, etc. Long story short, he did not get into any of the top schools he applied to and my gut feeling is his attendance was a giant factor. He ended up being quite happy at a state university and will apply to very selective grad schools.</p>
<p>To answer Xeneise’s questions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I said I’m failing all my classes but one. I’m just projecting that I will make up the work in time for finals and get good grades. In fact, I took an AP Calculus test a couple days ago and got 100%.</p></li>
<li><p>I haven’t had this severe of stomach aches for too long, only two months. It’s winter, so I don’t have any sports. I would play sports through stomach aches before now, but I also went to school during that time. I’ve had chronic stomachaches for over a year and a half, but not this bad.</p></li>
<li><p>Part of it is that I don’t need to go to school and I don’t have an overwhelming urge to go to school. It’s a lot easier to stop doing work whenever I feel bad when I’m at home, as well.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Also, I don’t understand what you me by “believing” me. There isn’t really anything to not believe.</p>
<p>nickel, I would take a year off from school if I was dropped from all my classes, but until then, I might as well just do all the work at home.</p>
<p>premature_gray, I don’t think it’s psycho-emotional. My doctors do, they say it’s stress… that I’m anxious about school because it is big and loud. That seems absolutely ridiculous to me. I <em>am</em> antisocial (in an introversial way, not a nerdy/geeky way), but I don’t really care and neither does anyone else. </p>
<p>Also, I am taking medication for anxiety/depression… but there haven’t been any effects whatsoever, so I don’t see it being psychological.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t mind just going to some state school, but I would prefer going to the best school possible.</p>
<p>iin - I did not mean to imply your issue is psycho-emotional, I just wanted to relay this boy’s story. He was failing, but was able to pull his grades up (via home testing, etc.) to a very respectable level. Again, he was a very bright kid, but my guess is his school attendance prevented him from getting into the top schools.</p>
<p>I wish you all the best.</p>
<p>good grades + few ECs + many absences = no to MIT and CalTech</p>
<p>in fact sometimes even
good grades +few ECs + perfect attendance = no to MIT and Cal Tech</p>
<p>Haha - is someone bitter?</p>
<p>I’m not an adcom, just an adult with very bright kids who were bored in h.s. and had to hold out until college. But they loved learning, too. It was in the humanities and performing arts that they excelled, not the maths, so that part is hard for me to fathom.
I think h.s. is probably very tough for you b/c you associate it with the destruction of your love of learning.
After reading many of your posts, (so would that be like an adcom reading several of your essays to guage how you sound as a person and potential student?), here’s what I hear: you are very smart in math, your family is absorbed with other of life’s realities not yours, it’s impossible to imagine making a friend at school because that environment is so dumb and rewards those who are. So even if there’s another non-social type lurking somwhere in the school, you can’t even find out they exist in order to have a conversation, let alone a friendship.
But your burning question is: will it affect my chances getting into the 2 colleges where I have heard I can learn. And by the wayk, there will be other smart kids there, and those will become your friends. Someday.
If you have an sibs, you don’t mention them, so either there aren’t any or they have no relevance to your thoughts.
Overall I get this very very depressed tone. “Flat affect” is what the psychologists call it. You are discouraged. I am so sorry that school is so useless to you, and it doesn’t matter what anybody says about work ethic. If you are not learning at school, it must seem unbearable and ridiculous to attend.
But…I liked when you started to write about love or learning. How does that manifest itself? Do you pursue your own study at home or just do the stated coursework? Can you go out into the community and intern yourself with a science or computer company in town? Join MENSA? What kind of research do you do when you get onto the Internet?
If you love to learn, how does that manifest itself right now?
Eventually I think you have to account for your time, when you write your college essays. If you weren’t in school often, I can imagine adcoms at places like MIT or Caltech understanding that…but what DID you do?
You definitely need to get out of Iowa. Not knocking Iowa. You jjust have to find out what the world has for you.
One part of me wants to say: go to school anyway.
Another part: pick up the phone, make an appt. with the Math Curriculum diretor of your h.s. and get a challenging course of home study. (Those administrators are either very smart or very dumb and you’ll know instantly. If it’s a wasted meeting, I’m sorry. I’ve worked for both kinds.)
It’s good what you’re doing with all the EC’s. I was relieved when you finally mentioned some participation in the life of your school, in your strength areas.<br>
Speaking of strength areas, do you feel well enough to consider doing something completely OUTSIDE your comfort zone? Coudl you imagine…tutoring poor kids in math at a boys/girls club afterschool? If you are able to teach others (as you did in 8th grade) you might be cheered when they respond to your helping them. Not everyone can teach others; if you can it’s a great thing. And it’ll help your college aps to show some interest in other human beings on the planet, other than yourself. You aren’t selfish, but perhaps self-absorbed right now.
Finally, I’d pursue the antidepression meds. You have every reason to BE depressed but in the meantime you ARE depressed. It comes out in your writing. As well as your zippy and witty insights. It’s all there. If I, as an adult, can see it, certainly the experienced adcom readers will also.
Good news is you hav time to change it.
Thanks for writing in. The fact that you didn’t know what OP meant was rather charming.
Finally, I iwsh I had a dollar for everytime I told my D, “Wait, hang on til you get ot college, it will be so much better.” She had no friends in h.s. and blossomed in college. She kept havintg to dumb down her vocab in h.s. and she was a literary person so it killed her inside, almost.
Random thoughts here, hoping YOU can put them into a pattern (hey, you’re the mathman not me!)
P.S. You were quite amazing to see through citygirlsmom’s shrillness.<br>
Do you see how she then softened and you began to dialogue? That’s why I’d love to see you engage more with people… of ANY age…a bit more, while you’re addressing all hte other academic and medical issues in these years. It will all help your application when you have to write it in a year or so.</p>
<p>p.s. if the thought of helping children (by tutoring them in math) makes your skin crawl, try on a different idea: go to play chess or do puzzles with senior citizens. If you call up a senior center and talk to the head of nursing or programming, s/he’ll know if there’s somebody there who used to be a scientist or mathemetician. Some of them are SO sharp, but just can’t move around physically. You could make their week in just an hour.
I’m just trying to get you outside of yourself when I suggest helping others. For many, it lifts depression.
For people getting ready to apply to colleges, it gives them seomething nice to write about, in addition to EC’s about math competitions!</p>