Why I came back from nowhere

I know this post comes out of nowhere and I don't want this to be a trauma dupping session or a rant. I just want you to get me to know and what I'm like and what I've experienced and what shaped to be person I am today. First of all, if you think about studying at or attending a programming school while programming is "just" your hobby. Maybe don't go there... I mean I can't predict what you should or shouldn't do. It's your life and you're free to what ever you want. But if you decide that you want to go on such a school or want to study a topic like programming, then it's not enough that coding is just a hobby. it's not even enough if you have an obsession with coding, it litteraly needs to be your religion. And I don't want to overgeneralize and say that every uni or school is incredibly hard or hostile towards creativity concerning programming as a subject. This is just what I have experienced and what knowledge I want to give to you.

I went to an elite-programming school, which means either you have extremely good grades from your previous school or your parents have an inhumane amount of money. For me it were the extremely good grades, I'm an A-student sooooo... Whatever, I came into this school with the intention of fusing art and coding together. Well... the school made it pertty clear that such an intention is not wanted here. And the whole class including me had to learn the programming language "C", and boy that's a boring ass language too learn and the creator probably had too much time. But honestly, I liked it, I liked to learn about C, I don't have a negative opinion about C. However the clear intention that the school wanted us to have is that coding and programming exists for the soule purpose of innovation and bringing humanity forward. For the first two weeks or so we dind't even code an a real computer, we wrote the code on paper and learned the functions C had manually. That wasn't a really great way to learn because we couldn't see in real time what the code actually does, but we then switched to regular computers.

There aso was this random guy, a rich kid and he had talent. But I was a bit envious of him, not only because he was good and had good grades, but because I had a really hard stance against rich people at the time. But now I've realized taht also rich people are people and not all of them are assholes. But dont get me wrong. I'm still . But he wasn't a bad person in general. However there was this one bully that wanted to be friends with the rich guy but even the rich guy wasn't really fond of him. Personally I wasn't a victim of his bullying. That one student sitting next to me, he was the mainvictim of his bullying and I didn't really interfer because I didn't want to get the attention of that bully, so I just have let it happen next to me. I talked with him sometimes and we even got together and had some fuin time. I learned that he was actually a really forgiving and kind person and that he didn't deserve the bullying at school. And then I fell into the bullying zone of that one bully. Now I too was a victim of slight bullying because I hung up with his mainvictim. However four years of previous bullying knowledge kicked in and I struck a deal with that bully. I did his homework and wrote cheatsheets for him. But Dude still managed to fail class, how?!

But there was also something cute happening during that school time. I've noticed that one guy had fallen in love with me. But I didn't had the same feelings for him. On the other hand I didn't want to hurt him so I never really made a move. But he too was a very kind but shy person. he never told me that he was in love with me but I felt that there were some feelings. Spoiler: he never told me his true feelings and we never entered a relationship. Sad but likely better that way. He even wrote me when I was constantly skipping school if I'm okay and so on. But never something developed between us.

Starting the first semester was pretty easy, we just had some homework assignements we had to do until a certain dead line, but then the other subjects also wanted to have a say and they bombarded us with homework. So there was high pressure on me, and I couldn' really cope with such a high amoun of pressure, so I mostly skipped the second semester and focused on my mental health because that one was getting a bit neglected back then. But I healed from that. I learned to love myself again and healed from the slight bullying I got there. I obviously failed the class, but the school also failed me. Now I'm at an art school that has multiple branches of art. Visual arts, performance arts, musical arts but also natural sciences and programming are also a branch in this school. However I'm in the visual arts branch and it was the best desicion I could have made. I have made so many friends in the recent years and together we're so gay, and I love that. Now looking back I'm not mad at the school, it just wasn't the right place for me to bloom in my own and unique way. BUT I have leaned from the mistakes there and if I will have children I will not send them there. Never! And thanks to Neocities I finally can experience the fusion of art and coding and making your own website. Being the creator of your website and having your own space is liberating to say the least. Coding and art can go together hand in hand and there is nothing wrong liking both.

Yeah that was it the first year, some say I shouldn't have skipped the second semester but for me it was a big step on way to say no and to stop a hurting process by myself. And the concept of my book was really starting to develop in that time like things were kicked off at this point. When writing that down I kinda see why some of my friends say this was the "highschool-drama"-era of my life. You have to popular rich kid, the bully and the victim and a potential love interest. However the main actor left after the first season because the enviroment was to toxic. Yeah I kinda get the joke know.

-JL

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