:sadness:
Honestly, is being totally desensitized to this sort of thing any less heartbreaking of a reaction?
It's less dramatized at least. I went through this too and lockdowns haven't changed much.
A teacher would barge around the halls and shake the locked door handles as we all crouched, it was pretty scary.
But this level of detail feels like embellishment, 'even the ranch kids cry' it feels like an author taking artistic liberties to hyperbole while swearing it's the truth. Why's that necessary? My siblings don't feel this way, they're in high school now.
We can fight for gun reform and mental healthcare without turning things into 'every student lives in constant paralyzing fear crying constantly'.
A teacher would barge around the halls and shake the locked door handles as we all crouched, it was pretty scary.
which horror movie is this
It doesn't hit harder, it comes off as Tumblr fanfic, because it is.
Yeah, I work in a school, and aside from occasional drills that the kids don't take seriously, none of this shit is even remotely familiar to me. Like, lol I don't know any teachers who have staplers at hand to throw
Teenagers, at least where I work, are not on the verge of bursting into tears and curling up into a ball at all times.
is this really a commonly held belief
Gothic tumblr tweens are emo, but PTSD is very real
If this was a school of survivors then yeah I would get it. But apparently it isn't?
I got out of school right before shootings became common enough to happen every week, but I could see the already present impulsive fears begin to morph. Before the shootings were that common, everyone in my hometown was afraid of secret Muslims and insurrectionary gay people suddenly conquering the place, then towards the end of high school the fear started transitioning to something more like "Muslim and gay students will commit school shootings." And it seemed like a genuine fear for some of the less connected to reality students. I know two former classmates who refer to themselves as survivors, despite a shooting or terrorist attack never occurring. All we had were drills and cops roaming around.
I graduated just as this shit was starting to get super common, and now I feel lucky not to have dealt with all of this. And it was bad back then, too. When I was in seventh grade, while everyone was on edge a few days after yet another highly publicized shooting, someone set off a string of firecrackers during lunch and the entire thousand-plus people sprinted out of school and into the surrounding neighborhood, jumping fences and scattering. It was one of the strangest things I've ever experienced, and something I never really liked to take seriously-after all, it turned out not to be real, right? But in the moment, nobody knows that, I didnt know that. It was like a shot from a nature documentary of a thousand gazelles all bolting at once from a brush fire. I was eating my lunch heard in the amphitheatre the bangs, I heard many screaming voices, and then I was sprinting with everyone else across the PE field to get to the fence. I ended up at the big double gates, which of course were padlocked as always. So some people went around to hop the fence, some started to squeeze through the gap in the dirt under the gates, and some went over then. I climbed because I'm a large son and it seemed easier than wriggling. While climbing, I got just a tiny taste of what it was like to really feel exposed. The gates were those 10 foot tall chain link ones, and with every step higher my brain and nerves were screaming "you're about to get shot in the back, nowyou're about to get shot in the back, andnow youre-". No 13 year old should have to feel that at school.
Yeah I know this is kind of rambling, but holy shit I literally just processed the seriousness of the experience. Sure there were no real bullets, but you can say the same about a mock execution, and this still torture.
Shit that sounds horrible. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. The trauma is very real and takes a long time to process.
At the age of 12 I was told I needed to know who I would die for and that it was okay if it was nobody, that was my decision to make.
What the fuck is this about?
Has to be fake. This is the most insanely melodramatic post I've ever seen, they were already doing lockdown drills when I graduated and I'm pretty sure I witnessed literally none of the above.
What you never grabbed the "shakespearean swords" in your drama classroom to defend yourself?
stupid af but I remember teachers actually saying stuff like "we can drop the heavy books on him" or whatever. That was earlier before we had daily mass shootings so perhaps it was more in jest back then.
The entire post seems that way, but I do recall having some little writing assignment back in like fifth grade (mid 90s, pre-Columbine) wherein we were supposed to think about who/what we would die for. Idk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Either way, doing these kinds of melodramatic drills wherein you have people acting the parts of shooters and victims, that's a giant waste of money that just traumatizes kids.
Uhh this sounds fake to me, and if it's real, those active shooter drills really, really gotta stop - that sounds significantly, unambiguously more damaging than the actual school shootings. I dunno, this seems like bullshit.
The ALICE Institute, a for-profit company, and others like them, are doing their best to traumatize children and grift schools in the 40 states that now mandate active shooter drills.
Active shooter trainings are a 2.5 billion dollar industry, BTW - warning: Daily Kos, but the image in the article is from an active shooter training in a literal Levitt Town so it encapsulates Amerikkka perfectly.
I opened that article expecting to just see people huddled out of sight or under desks.
Instead I see a man with a bandana on pointing a fake gun at students.
I have never been more infuriated in my entire fucking life that someone thought that was a good idea. I'm speechless.
wouldn't want to let a little childhood trauma get in the way of those profits now would we? jesus christ we need a cultural revolution for these roaches so much stuff here is just deranged
I don't mean to invalidate this person's experience, but this ain't anywhere close to common. Columbine happened before I was born. School shootings have been around my entire life, and not once have I felt or knew anyone who felt this way.
What will the long term effects of this be? Is it like the nuclear drills?
I'm not sure that produced the same level of immediate paranoia, rather, a kind of festering solipsism and xenophobia.
I'm sure this is exaggerated and the author's experiences aren't universal, but holy shit the fact that plenty of this is real and happens everywhere in :amerikkka: just sucks
Wait.
At first I thought this was about a school of survivors. But it seems like it isn't? If it isn't then no way this is real. Especially the who you'd die for part, this is 100% fake.
Much of it is exaggerated, but I’ve definitely seen most of it experienced especially knowing what places are good to hide in schools or not wanting to go to bathrooms during class.
Up to that point I understand. Well, the bathroom thing is still kinda weird to me for teens who haven't experienced a shooting but I can sort of see it. But when I got to the who's gonna die for whom part and especially the Shakespearean sword part I checked out.
Eh you’d be surprised. Many Americans I know who haven’t experienced a shooting would usually say how sometimes they get nervous during class change time cause it’s so populous, or the fire alarm thing in the post, or walking alone on campus. It’s a secondary traumatic situation there from just constantly knowing you could very well die at school any day in that country.
I think that line is about kids who died holding the camera in some other shooting or something. I didn't notice the question above at first, but apparently it is about survivor's guilt in schools where shootings DIDN'T happen. Like, come on, no one ever told kids to pick who they will die for.
Tfw when none of my classmates would die for me :deeper-sadness:
I got some weirdo in my dms in some other forum telling me he would die for me. I don't even know why.
There was a lockdown at my school for something that turned out to not be a threat. In the split second that the staff started clearing us from the cafeteria, I decided that I wanted to go to the library or a classroom so that I could chuck something through a window if need be and make a run for it. I was sitting with a friend who had a reputation of being smart or whatever, and he led the handful of us who were sitting together to an office right in the center of the building.
Not a great feeling to sit on the floor and wait to die, trying to figure out what the options are if a threat popped up at the door (not a whole lot at that point).
Yeah I imagine if there was a lockdown everyone would be shitting their pants. But I just can't buy that the drama teacher is asking kids who's gonna sit at the door with the fucking Shakespeare swords.
for sure, I agree that the original post takes something real but exaggerates it fivefold to the point of being ridiculous
this seems really exaggerated, at my school lockdown drills were just a fun excuse to not have classes for a morning.
