Although she was gregarious, she inadvertently separated herself from people because she was so often inside her own head, focusing on her creativity.
Gaming was “one of the only times when you only have to focus on one thing.” But even more than that, “It’s like an anchor. As long as I know it’s there, it’s part of me. It’s some form of continuity that in my life I desperately need.
Too many parents fail to understand that there is a difference between fitting in and being liked, that there is a difference between being “normal” and being happy. High school is temporary. Family is not.
My heart broke not only for the daughter who already was forced to become her mother’s alarmingly narrow ideal, but also for the middle daughter who knew that her in mother’s mind she had already failed.
I figure I’ll win the fight in twenty years or so anyways when I end up with a decent life and their unemployed and living at home.
In the minds of their peers, too often students become caricatures of themselves.
Studies have shown that, at least among students, popularity equals visibility.
Being indie means being artistic and finding your own eccentric identity. The name of the game for being an indie kid is to never admit you are one. If you do, it goes against your beliefs against labeling, thus making you a hypocrite.
Nonconformists aren’t just going against the grain; they’re going against the brain. Either their brains aren’t taking the easy way out to begin with, or in standing apart from their peers, these students are standing up to their biology.
If teachers are uncomfortable at their own school, they will pass on their uncertainties or negative attitude to students.
Being an outsider doesn’t necessarily indicate any sort of social failing. We do not view a tuba player as musically challenged if he cannot play the violin.
The 1970s, fewer than 25% of US residents lived in counties in which the presidential candidate won by landslide. 30 years later, that percentage has nearly doubled.
He didn’t realize that simply by mingling among various lunch tables, he was befriending people in different crowds, weaving together the fringes of the cafeteria.
Part of the problem is that people at our school don’t listen. They just put on the headphones and tune out the world. It’s intimidating.
The cafeteria made him feel like an observer rather than a participant in the high school experience.
How could he encapsulate in a pithy admissions-interview line all of his unique ideas and interests?
Many of the differences that cause students to be excluded in school are actually the same qualities or skills that other people are going to admire, respect or value about that person in adulthood.
Adults tell students that it gets better, that the world changes after school, that being ‘different’ will pay off sometime after graduation. But no one explains to them why.
A Health Affairs study comparing patient-satisfaction scores with HCAHPS surveys of almost 100,000 nurses showed that a better nurse work environment was associated with higher scores on every patient-satisfaction survey question.