The racism, discrimination, and segregation. As a Native American in a white school, it was frequently traumatic. Frequently assaulted and threatened by teachers and the principal to cut my long hair. Then had to sit in class to learn about how all those things I was actively experiencing were in America’s past was bullshit. <30 years ago.

The hardest part for me was the way the criteria for success changed between high school and college.

I aced high school because high school requires one to be smart. But I barely scraped by in college because college requires self-organization and discipline.

Nobody really sat me down and raised the flag on how bad my habits were, before college. The message I always got was about how “gifted” I was and how the world would be my oyster because I’m so smart.

The only person really striving to teach me discipline in high school was my track and cross country coach. For that I’m eternally grateful, because it could have been a lot worse.

But most of my adult life has been spent struggling to develop consistent output, struggling to keep promises, struggling to show up consistently.

Don’t know if that’s gotten better since I was a kid, but if I could change one thing it would be to do a lot more to train kids to fit into a structure where others are relying on them to deliver things on time. To keep working when things get hard, and not to rest too heavily on being “smart” as a plan for future success.

Smart is like 1% of success. The rest is conscientiousness.

Adhd didn’t exist back then.

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Having undiagnosed autism and parents not believing in it. I fucking hated school