Field Trip Nightmares

I don't recall the exact moment I began to hate field trips.  As far back as I can remember, they were a source of anxiety for me.  I did not know how to act around my fellow students without the structure and oversight of a classroom environment.  The last fieldtrip I remember going on was in 1st or 2nd grade, to a small theme park in Southern California.  I don't even remember what it was like.  Then there was the nightmarish "6th Grade Camping trip".  I made a cool little leather something-or-other, stamped with a bull.  Everything else sucked.  I would get this pent up energy and have no idea what to do with it.  Being the new kid (I had just moved to IL from California at the begining of that school year) it was already difficult to fit in, and being a goofball on top of that... well, that camping trip put the fear of fieldtrips in me for good. 


 




my first photo edit attempt is almost as sad as the face I'm making LOL

    

In fact, now that I think of it, that might actually be the turning point in my timeline of fieldtrips.  I never went on a fieldtrip after that.  I missed out on some pretty cool places too.  I missed out on 6 flags (a Warner Brothers theme park in the US, not sure if they have locations in other countries.  It's like a less childish verson of Disneyland, with rides themed from Batman, Superman, Looney Tunes, and a general Carnival atmosphere).  Museum trips?  No thank you.  There were a lot of those. 

So what did I do, you ask?  Well I stayed at school.  With a teacher or two, depending on how many kids didn't get permission from their parents to go.  We would do fun activities like word searches, movie reviews, book reading... it was actually a time I looked forward to.  A chance to build rapport with my teachers.  They alway understood me better after a fieldtrip day.  These days were relaxing.  No homework, but no real school work either, and most importantly, not dealing with the craziness of the other kids on a bus and museum.  I'm crazy as it is.  I am not used to my peers being just as energetic and crazy as I, and crammed into a school bus with them.

  Not thanks, that's not for me.  I imagine the teachers' surprise, too, when I became a calm, easy-going, intelligent young man.  The social pressures from school and trying to fit in were the

key to my rambunctious nature as a student.  Even now, when there's no pressue to meet anyone's standards, I'm actually a pretty calm, collected guy.