What Happened in High School
I have a very clear memory from grade eight when the teacher, who I really liked and knew was a good teacher even at 14, called each student up and pointed to her desk where there was a sheet of paper with each student’s graduating mark. My average was just over 75% so it was at the honors level but she was not satisfied. “You can do better,” she said.
I knew I was lazy. I didn’t like doing homework, but grade eight was the first time I realized I was fairly bright. I had only just started to read on my own and almost immediately began to devour books at the rate of one-a-week. I could do the homework at the same time the teacher put it on the blackboard and so it was completed at the same time as she finished. One day she stopped in the middle of putting the homework on the board and turned around. She caught me but I thought she would be impressed at how quickly I was completing the work. She wasn’t. She said. “It’s homework. You do it at home.” Another teacher might have been impressed but not Miss Hamilton. She knew about potential and she knew I was operating below mine.
In high school, it caught up with me in grade ten which marked the first time I failed a test. It was French Grammar, and I found memorizing vocabulary painful. I was in an experimental accelerated program at the time, the goal of which was to complete four years of high school in three. The entrance requirement was a minimum IQ of 125. I had no trouble in grade nine. Grade ten was a different story, however, I completed the program and graduated with what was then referred to as junior matriculation in the three years. Only half of the 42 students who began the program in grade nine graduated with grade twelve in the three years. Back in those days there was grade thirteen and you needed grade thirteen to get into university. I went into a grade thirteen class a year younger than most of the other students.
I thought I was going to Royal Military College and so took the courses that matched the entrance requirements: algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics and chemistry. I had a minor interest in chemistry but the rest of the subjects bored me to tears. I failed all of those required subjects except chemistry and it was a water shed moment in my life. I can still remember what happened as I settled in to study, much too close to the actual exams. There was too much to cover and I found that as I read something in a text book, or in my notes, I would come to the bottom of the page and realize I hadn’t retained a thing that I just had read. I would start again only to have it happen again. I panicked and went to tell them at the office at school. I got a strange reception because of my school record up to that time and the fact that I had done four years of high school in three and, of course, they had no idea why I was there. Neither did I. Looking back now I think I was probably looking for some understanding of what was happening to me. Back then I was just another lazy kid who had got as far as I had on brains but didn’t have he staying power to excel. I still have nightmares about that time.
I know now what happened but it has baffled me most of my life even though my university experience was worse. It was the maths and the sciences. It was the first instance for me of what my performance is like doing something that es not stimulating or in which I have no interest.
There was a lot more to come…