Has anyone ever been screwed over by the system?

neltharion
Wed, 06 Apr 2011 19:34:04 +0000

What you’re describing isn’t being screwed over by the system, because it’s within your control. Poor teaching can be counteracted by self-studying. Choosing the “wrong” major is nobody’s fault but your own, and your GPA is within your control. Not having the motivation to study and thus deciding to “waste” four years of your life in high school without really doing anything is also your fault. Don’t forget that we all have to jump through the same hoops. We’ve all had to deal with teachers who assigned grades based on favoritism, and we’ve all had to deal with tough curves before.

Getting screwed over by the bureaucracy is being placed in a class well below your level and having to suffer through this all through high school, because your school doesn’t offer anything beyond Algebra II (which you have to retake despite having taken it in Jr. High because your school apparently doesn’t accept the credit). Because of all this, when you apply to most tech colleges, you’re rejected simply based on your lack of math creds and wind up attending an art college because it’s the only one that’ll take you with your credentials. You then drop out of because you aren’t learning anything and don’t want to waste any more money on a degree you care nothing for, especially since it won’t get you any closer to anything you want to do. You then enter the work force and stay there for a number of years, trying to figure out what the hell you’re going to do with your life, and eventually you discover that what you really want to do is to become a researcher for NASA - that is your absolute dream job - but you know there’s almost no way to make it there because of that school system you were placed in fifteen years ago when you attended high school.

This happened to a friend of mine, and that is what is called “being screwed over by the system.” She is one of the most intelligent people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and all of this was entirely out of her control. She had the bad luck to have been placed in a school system that would not allow her to learn at her own pace. She had the bad luck of attending a high school with an unsympathetic administration. She had ADD, so the administration assumed she was mentally deficient and placed her in classes below her level, and no matter how much she argued or how well she did, nobody took her seriously. Nobody helped her; her parents certainly didn’t. This high school pretty much screwed up her life for the next fifteen years.

All that said, she’s currently making the best of the situation. Has a decent job that she sometimes enjoys. Is thinking about attending CC again to try to dig herself out of this pit. And really, that’s all you can do. You can be as bitter as you like, but the key thing is that you also have to do something about it. There’s no point in being so bitter that all you do is wallow in self-pity.