Y, Enter.
Thankyou for sharing; you are not alone.

It sounds breathtakingly naive of them to assume that not taking a subject equals no interest in subject. They're known as academic choices, and pretty much all schoolkids have to make them. There just aren't enough hours in the day, nor enough school resources, to do everything that you want* - you'd think that parents might have realised that by the time their children are in education.

I couldn't take every subject I wanted, having been steered (with the best intentions) into a combination that was "best" for an unspecified future career in something. Even though that meant not doing Physics at school, because I wasn't 'good' at it; which contributed to later struggling and failing at University in Biology**, a subject I was 'good' at.

In the interests of fairness, could there have been finanical issues restricting the Y12 excursion? I'm the middle of 3 and I had to limit trips with school: Money was the real issue, but pride forces people to come up with other excuses. That doesn't explain the rest, though.

I'll try not to be annoyingly trite, and say that despite your past you've done allright (even though it seems true). But at least, having such an awareness of what happened should help you avoid repeating, from the other side, the same mistakes in the future.

* Of course, it didn't help that we had to spend a valuable slot on a compulsory study of a single book. I refer to mandatory RE, a GCSE in which has yet to prove of any academic value.
** Biology is really applied chemisty, which is really applied physics: xkcd.com/435/
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Sat 12 Sep 2009, 21:51, 1 reply)

Finacial Limitations?
Bah. I've had a job since 11 (paperround) and had to pay for all my own excursions/outings since then. I do believe I had to pay 'resource fee' ($180 to school for loaning of textbooks) from year 9 onwards.

It was never a issue of finance. It was an issue of DENIED.*

* Should read permission. Looking back now I wondered if she had a DENIED stamp that she used on permission slips. Seriously.
( glasnt is playing herself off., Sun 13 Sep 2009, 4:01, closed)

ah.
In that case, I don't really know what to say.

All I can think of is to resort to my fallback chirpy optimism: At least now you're older, hopefully you have the money to do the really fun stuff. That tankballing sounds like fun...
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Sun 13 Sep 2009, 23:03, closed)

Indeedy.
Most activities involve copious amounts of alcohol ^_^
( glasnt is playing herself off., Wed 16 Sep 2009, 11:46, closed)