The thing that strikes me about school is that people are pretty much locked into it. Once you get out of that system, if you are surrounded by nasty people, you can usually just leave. That's what I do, anyway. With school, not so much luck - it's possible to transfer to another school, but it's usually not very easy to pull of.
Of course the feeling of not being liked sticks, too, but perhaps it wouldn't even manifest itself so much if kids wouldn't have to expose themselves to so much nastiness to begin with.
I wish I could explain to all the depressed kids that there is actually a whole world out there, beyond the borders of the small environment they grew up in. With 6 billion people on the planet, there are many, many people you can relate to. The people you went to school with are just random.
This is so damn true! My grades suffered in high school because of occasional bullying. This caused frequent feeling of uncertainty if I was to run into people who I would rather avoid. I remember sleeping when I got home from school because the emotional toll was exhausting. However, the only thing that kept me going was knowing that I would reinvent myself after I got out of high school.
The 'locked in' part is a huge factor. High school was a prison to me. Once I had a choice, my life id an absolute turn around. One other thing to add is that pride added to the problem. To tell my parents I was being bullied was impossible. So, this makes you isolated with your own mental anguish.
Exactly this. I remember the feeling of being very surprised to find out that life could meant so much more after I finished school. Suddenly bad things didn't happen because you were unlucky and that's it, but as a result of your choices that you could to some extent control. Things started to have, you know, meaning.
And yet, being 'locked in', as you describe it, teaches a valuable life lesson: sometimes you have to deal with what you have, instead of run away or hide. As described above, sometimes you need to punch a factor that makes your situation undesireable and triggers your "flight" response to greatly increase your situation.
As in, this is your life, deal with it. You can't run away, so fix your problems instead of running from them. Teachers turn their back on you, so it's up to you. etc etc etc.
Learning that will help you in your life. Your job sucks: you can either run away and find something else, or you can kick it into high gear and make it worth your while, save the company, get rich. Depending on situation, of course.
You forget that you are kid when you are in school; you barely scratched the surface of understanding how people think, what motivates and what drives them, heck you don't even know how would you take care of yourself alone. And yet you're being asked to deal with this. Yes, we eventually have to learn how to deal with life, but not this way.
I'm glad that punching back worked out for some kids, but I would be wary of inferring a general rule from that. Might be the kids for whom punching back didn't work out just didn't tell their story.
What could also happen is that the bully gathers his friends and strikes back in a big way. Or maybe he has a knife. Or whatever - I don't know, probably I would try to punch back, too. But I don't think it is essential for people to go through such an ordeal.
Of course the feeling of not being liked sticks, too, but perhaps it wouldn't even manifest itself so much if kids wouldn't have to expose themselves to so much nastiness to begin with.
I wish I could explain to all the depressed kids that there is actually a whole world out there, beyond the borders of the small environment they grew up in. With 6 billion people on the planet, there are many, many people you can relate to. The people you went to school with are just random.