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Which subjects at high school made you most anxious?

Misty Avich said:
I'd say PE tops the list for me (Phys Ed). I often struggled with team games because for some reason I never understood the rules of those games, like hockey and netball. And I hated rounders (which is similar to baseball I think). I'd get anxiety and panic attacks when having to play that, but the teachers forced me, as it was just part of the curriculum. I liked PE activities where you work in partners or groups, but not teams.

Also science made me anxious, though only in the first year of high school. I didn't understand science at all and we often got a ton of homework.

I was worried about math before starting high school, because of the stories that went around about math teachers being aggressive and throwing board erasers across the room at your head if you were bad at math (and I struggled with math). But it turned out that all the math teachers I ever had at school were really nice and even fun.

I found cookery a bit daunting because I just couldn't grasp it and had to keep relying on the other children to help. I had trouble paying attention to the instructions and was scared I'd make my dessert wrong. It was also very fast-paced, and I'd often get told off by the teacher for dithering too much.

Drama was also daunting, because sometimes it could be very embarrassing. The teacher often made us do activities that were nightmarish to shy students such as myself. The boys loved drama, as it was a chance they were allowed to mess around and show off.

What subjects at high school were most daunting for you? (I say high school because the school system is different in other parts of the world, but I'd say approximately between ages 11 and 16).
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I hated math and gym. Math has always been a mystery to me and I was such a loaner gym was torture. Loved history, English and some sciences especially plant science. I did a lot of special projects that let me work by myself.
 
Only class that made me anxious was gym in ninth grade because of an extremely traumatizing incident that kept happening to me for months and the school decided to blame me for it instead of punishing the kid who was doing this to me despite them knowing he had done it to me once before and doing absolutely nothing to punish him or prevent it from happening again after only giving him a three day out of school suspension after the first time which is basically nothing. It was no wonder I became so afraid of gym class and refused to participate out of fear and it caused me to regress the progress I had made to try to be social and make new friends.

Also hated math because I couldn’t understand the way they kept teaching it to me and by the time I was diagnosed as being autistic, I was already a senior and it was too late to change teaching methods on me. I just see this jumbled mess of symbols. Only math class that I could keep up with and learn well was geometry.
 
I often find myself dreaming of being back at school and having to do PE. In these dreams I have forgotten my PE kit or I'm late to a PE class.
 
I was only officially in senior high school for less than a couple of months because everything about it gave me anxiety. Especially the bullying. Also my emetophobia was so bad I decided not to eat breakfast *or* lunch. Bad idea.
 
  1. Team-based PE.
    (Individual-based PE* wasn't so bad, and I was on the cross-country team.)
  2. Career Guidance. I now know why. It was "social skills" on steroids.
    (Being a required class, I had to take a super-senior semester to pass it.
    full
    )
  3. My first year science class, Intro to Physical Science, was a sampling of different sciences, but it was mostly chemistry. None of my labs went like they were supposed to...
    full

    (I had more success in physics & math. I did not even try biology because I was grossed out at the thought of dissection.
    full
    )
*I will admit that I was anxious about (low) hurdles, at first. But my "boys" survived unscathed...!
full
 
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We had to dissect a pig's eye one time in science, but the other kids made fun of me when I stupidly said I felt sorry for the eye.

I'm glad we never dissected animals bodies though because I'd be crying at the sight of a dead animal. Yes, I even feel overwhelming empathy for dead animals.
 
I liked science at the elementary school because it was always so much more interesting. The teacher would stand at the front of the class and tell us all about the universe or the human body, and the whole class were also interested. But at high school science lessons got boring because we had to learn the tiny details, where in elementary school you learn more about the big picture.
 
Math

It's always been my weakest subject and even to this day, I am utterly terrible at math. Always hated math class.

Also didn't particularly like gym class either, but only when it was days we were supposed to use the pool. Because of gender dysphoria reasons, I never did that stuff.
 
Misty Avich said:
We had to dissect a pig's eye one time in science, but the other kids made fun of me when I stupidly said I felt sorry for the eye.

I'm glad we never dissected animals bodies though because I'd be crying at the sight of a dead animal. Yes, I even feel overwhelming empathy for dead animals.
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That’s understandable. Students have the right to refuse to dissect.
 
NDR2 said:
That’s understandable. Students have the right to refuse to dissect.
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Most of the kids couldn't actually go near the eye as they were too squeamish. I wasn't squeamish, I just...felt sorry for the eye. And the pig it belonged to (even though the pig was probably dead).
 
It's so refreshing to hear so many of you say that PE was one of the big classes you disliked.. I thought I was alone, everyone in my class seemed to have no problems with PE.
Like seriously I struggled with everything, everything in PE even the basic stuff and I'd look around me and everyone else would be doing it just fine with no troubles whatsoever.. hell some would even show that they're over such simple exercises by making them harder such as the people who would do one handed pushups or clap between every pushups. And I hated that they'd regularly force us to do sports but apparently for a lot of my peers that was their favorite moments of PE, but I never cared for it.. I don't even like watching sports.
Essentially the reason why I hated PE was because It made me feel super self conscious because I was struggling and seemingly nobody else was, and no couldn't tell you why I was struggling I didn't know why even back then.
Our PE rotated and became different things at different times, it'd be regular pe for a certain amount of time, then it'd be health class where we'd learn about healthy eating and stuff like that, then it'd be swimming.. maybe not in that exact order though.
I wasn't good at swimming either, I think my main issue was with the instruction to "keep your legs straight" which I had absolutely no clue how to do because every time I'd try to do the various swimming moves that require that my legs wouldn't stay straight and refused to stay straight.. I just never understood it. So that was yet another instance of self consciousness because everyone else was doing it just fine I was the lone struggler. *sighs*
Oh yeah and I think some responses said not liking the locker room stuff, which yeah same. I'd tend to change off by myself away from everyone else because I wasn't comfortable doing it around my peers.
Last thing I hated about PE? It was graded, why was it graded?! Granted you couldn't fail PE and the grade supposedly didn't count towards your gpa but then if that's the case why was it graded? For sports purposes? Just made me feel worse because I consistently had the lowest possible grade in PE and my father didn't help as he never understood how or why as "That should be an easy A!", at least outside of that he didn't care too much probably because the grade didn't actually count. I was so relieved when pe was no longer a forced class and became elective.

As for other classes that made me anxious?
Math, I wasn't good at it at all. My issue was I didn't have even the basic stuff down pat and when that's the case it makes everything else even harder.. if I wasn't given special permission to use a calculator in instances where you typically weren't allowed to I would've been a lot worse off as that was essentially my crutch. My father really didn't like that I wasn't good at math, he claimed math is important and will be needed for my regular day to day life. He essentially gaslit me into believing the reason I struggled with basic math was because I wasn't paying attention back in elementary school when they were teaching multiplication and division, I only realized recently thanks to my therapist that it was probably due to my being on the spectrum that I had struggles understanding math. Oh and I also wasn't good at doing the math on my head, which my father also wasn't too thrilled with and he'd often pop quizz me on random math questions and tell me to solve them right there and then and when I couldn't he's be like "You should be able to! This is important!"

And the last thing that made me anxious was English class whenever we had to do essays because I was absolutely terrible at writing essays. And I tried I really did but seemingly no matter how hard I tried I'd never get a good grade on an essay.. well okay maybe once but I couldn't replicate whatever I did right that one time. Eventually I just gave up and didn't even bother with essays anymore which made me gets Fs because I didn't even have an essay to turn in. I hated essays.

Sorry didn't intend to go into so much detail there, let's just say I have a lot of trauma around my highschool years and not because of the typical stuff like bullying or drama.
 
Yes, PE made me self-conscious too. I knew not every girl in my PE class liked PE though. Some just endured it. But others really made a big deal out of it and their competitive attitude was too intimidating for me. And most the PE teachers we had only favoured the enthusiastic, competitive kids.

I felt sorry for the boys too, because they were literally forced to get dirty and rough in PE, and play outside in all weathers (us girls got coddled a bit more). But not all boys like getting dirty or playing rough, so I bet it was daunting for boys who disliked getting dirty (not all boys want to get dirty). In PE boys were expected to be rough and tough. Girls were expected to be competitive.
I think that if PE is so mandatory then kids shouldn't feel under that kind of pressure. One time when me and a few others brought in notes to excuse us from PE, the teacher had a go at us in front of the rest of the class by yelling "PE is a lesson just as much as all your other lessons are!" And I felt like saying "well treat it like a lesson then, and not the national olympics."
 
Swimming when I forgot my swimming trunks!! They made us wear white PE shorts that went see through when wet as some kind of bizarre humiliation ritual.

Any technical subject that you couldn't blag.

Rugby in the winter.

PSE: Personal and Social Education - when they wanted you to talk about insecurities

Drama: too shy

Art: terrible teachers snuffing out fun
 
Misty Avich said:
We had to dissect a pig's eye one time in science, but the other kids made fun of me when I stupidly said I felt sorry for the eye.

I'm glad we never dissected animals bodies though because I'd be crying at the sight of a dead animal. Yes, I even feel overwhelming empathy for dead animals.
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My family forced me to do dissection after mistaking me becoming extremely upset at the thought of dissecting a frog because they thought that I was afraid of death and didn’t understand it when the real reason I found it extremely upsetting was because the teacher told us how they used to kill the frogs before dissecting them and it was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever heard and sounded extremely inhumane. The kids in my biology class began to bully me and call me stupid just because I said that I didn’t think that forensic science wasn’t as accurate as everyone claimed and had asked how could the scientists know if evidence was planted to frame someone of a crime and I was told “nobody would ever do that” which isn’t true as all you’d need would be latex gloves, some hair, and tweezers. They all tried to force me to say that I was wrong and got angry with me when I refused to do it. Only one other kid actually agreed with me and said that I had a really good point. Also that year’s senior prank set off a pretty bad phobia attack for me in my biology classroom to the point I was screaming and hyperventilating and had to be taken out of the room and I refused to go back in there for days because I was terrified that the prank would still be there. What the prank was the seniors had moved the taxidermy models that the teacher had around the room and they put them in places where they didn’t belong and placed the turtle on the ceiling which was literally directly above me seat. This turtle was made to have its neck stretched out and looking up. So anyway I looked up and saw that thing staring directly into my eyes and that’s when I started screaming. Those horrible eyes kept looking at me and it was terrifying. Sometimes I still see that thing hanging above me whenever I close my eyes. Since then I freak out if I see any type of taxidermy unless it is behind glass and the eyes aren’t looking at me or really high on the wall where I can ignore it. I haven’t been able to go into nature museums since then either.
 
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Well...
I am the same with PE, I hated it in high school and I hated the uniforms
I could not play any of the sports well. Some things were better than others.
I hated maths.
But in year 9, Mr D my maths teacher really helped me and I did quite well. He was an amazing teacher and I put up my hand each time and he always took the time to explain each formula to me so I did ok in tests.
I did not like science before it was boring and I was scared to light the Bunsen burner.
I hated geography and history.
Because geography was just drawing maps and I hated all that.
Hated history and all the stories and found it boring.
Found literature in year 10 boring because none of the books were readable like animal farm.
Religious Ed I found boring to go on and on about the bible etc and what it means.
I found English boring too because all we did was this top marks junk and the books were boring, found Shakespeare boring for the most part especially things like MacBeth, did not like newspaper analysis like all the ways newspaper articles talk to their audience and the way they sway them, was not that good at creative writing and could not think of many ideas.
All in all it was pretty boring
 
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