I had learning problems when I was in elementary school, and didn't really start to read well until high school. I never read any of the middle grade classics that were popular when I was young - 'Harriet the Spy', 'Charlotte's Web', 'The Witch of Blackbird Pond', 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'.
I don't know if I was popular in high school. My school was actually not really clique-y, which was nice. I went to a very artsy school, so everyone was kind of friends with each other. I was trying to be popular more, like, in junior high and elementary school and dealt with all that backstabbing and drama.
I really had a rough time in middle school. Middle school to me was the way most people explain high school. Then in high school I had a blast. I basically did everything that you would do in high school or in college, so it really wasn't a difficult thing to pull out.
Grade school, middle school and high school were relatively easy for me, and with little studying, I was an honor student every semester, graduating 5th in my high school class.
I ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us on French in fifth grade, which meant that by the time I graduated high school I had been at it for eight years.
I read recently that all of us can be defined in adult life by the way others perceived us in high school. I know [people] who had the popular, good-looking path in high school; they tend not to do so well. It was a little bit too easy for them, where for those of us who struggled in every sense, perhaps our determination and self-reliance and discipline were reinforced by that.
So, I was in a segregated, all black, public elementary school until fourth grade, until my father died. And that's when my mother transferred me to a private, predominantly white school and I saw both sides of the world at a very young age.
I read that 36% of Latin kids drop out of high school, and we're the most bullied minority in schools right now. And my son had troubles in elementary school. So that made me really question being Latin in the United States.
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.
I stopped going to school in the middle of fourth grade. Everyone grows up with the peer pressure, and kids being mean to each other in school. I think that's such a horrible thing, but I never really dealt with it in a high school way.
After my parents got divorced, I had to go right into public school in the fourth grade. The Steiner school had never really taught me how to read, so it was a rude awakening. I was playing catch-up the whole time.
I was born in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1948 but grew up in a black neighborhood. During elementary and middle school, I commuted to a bilingual school in Chinatown. So I did not confront white American culture until high school.
I never went to high school. I never really finished eighth grade. I was kicked out of seventh grade once and eighth grade twice. Mainly for not showing up and not doing it. Then I went to an alternative high school for part of what would have been ninth grade and part of what would have been 10th grade.
I had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.
McCain is the kid who was really cool in middle school but never got high school game and people are sick of him acting like he's still popular.
I didn't care for most of the books I was being asked to read in school. I started reading like crazy right after high school when I got a job in a mental hospital. I was working my way through college, and I did a lot of night shifts, and there was nothing to do. So I read like crazy, serious stuff, all the classics.
I've read stories from people who say they always knew they were attracted to the same sex, or that they figured it out at a young age. I'm not one of them. I had practically no idea until one night in my sophomore year of high school.