>Our it could have earlier identified you as 'at-risk', and led to more positive interventions in your education.
I've honestly thought about that a lot. You know, "what if someone took me under their wing and showed me how to truly fit in with society and be a great person". I doubt that would have worked. I saw most adults as idiots at the time and was not inclined to listen to anyone. For one, the advice I did get never helped or lined up with reality.
My parents told me to graduate high school, even though they hadn't. The counselors told me not to do drugs, even though the grapevine told me they themselves had (doesn't matter if that was true or not, as a teenager you make up your own "facts"). And my brain told me I had it all figured out and was part of the elite, and the rap music I blared that spoke of killing cops, beating women, and "making millions" justified my own thoughts. I was beyond help. It was only through basically getting kicked of my parents house and going all the way to the bottom did I then realized that I knew nothing.
Of course, perhaps if there was some counselor or authority that I could have repected at school, maybe then I would have listened. But finding someone to mesh with my mentality would have been difficult and would have required a lot of thought, care, and time on their part. And in my general experience, most counselors seem to get pretty burned out after 5+ years of dealing with unruly children and they then revert to not trying much and just occupying a desk chair. Most of my high school's faculty was like that. Most had had the same position for the last 20 years.
I've honestly thought about that a lot. You know, "what if someone took me under their wing and showed me how to truly fit in with society and be a great person". I doubt that would have worked. I saw most adults as idiots at the time and was not inclined to listen to anyone. For one, the advice I did get never helped or lined up with reality.
My parents told me to graduate high school, even though they hadn't. The counselors told me not to do drugs, even though the grapevine told me they themselves had (doesn't matter if that was true or not, as a teenager you make up your own "facts"). And my brain told me I had it all figured out and was part of the elite, and the rap music I blared that spoke of killing cops, beating women, and "making millions" justified my own thoughts. I was beyond help. It was only through basically getting kicked of my parents house and going all the way to the bottom did I then realized that I knew nothing.
Of course, perhaps if there was some counselor or authority that I could have repected at school, maybe then I would have listened. But finding someone to mesh with my mentality would have been difficult and would have required a lot of thought, care, and time on their part. And in my general experience, most counselors seem to get pretty burned out after 5+ years of dealing with unruly children and they then revert to not trying much and just occupying a desk chair. Most of my high school's faculty was like that. Most had had the same position for the last 20 years.