Does going through your school projects from childhood make you emotional?
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JLeslie (
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September 5th, 2022
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My dad has been going through boxes of stuff and he found some book reports and projects I did in 5th and 6th grade, and some report cards from those years too. It made me a little emotional seeing those things over zoom. I hadn’t remembered my grades were so mediocre in 5th grade, but much better in 6th grade. I even commented about the 5th grade grades, and my dad said they weren’t that bad. I guess that was consistent with when I was a kid, my parents weren’t expecting all A’s like some parents.
On one report my 5th grade teacher said I wrote very well, but hadn’t read all of the materials. That sounds very plausible. I guess she was trying to encourage me to work harder. I remember being very luke warm about her.
Actually, from 4th grade on I didn’t really like many of my teachers except for a very few in jr and high school. When I say like, I mean really enjoy going to school and seeing them and being in their class. Wow, I just realized that now as I’m writing it. I think most of my teachers were good teachers though. College was different, I’m just talking about K-12.
He had a drawing I did of a city, it was looking overhead, like looking at a map with the roads, houses, school, mall, playgrounds, etc. I’m so happy he kept it. I remember being really proud of it and my teacher took a moment to tell me verbally how great he thought it was, and he wondered aloud how I came up with it, although he only gave me an A-. I don’t remember what the exact assignment was.
I don’t know, it made me feel sad thinking about it all and seeing the class work I did.
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Part of the end of school rituals after the final exams is destroying all the materials.
I did not even keep anything from the previous year.
I have absolutely nothing left from school.
Even my trusty graphing calculator died from battery leakage.
@ragingloli Ritual in your family? Or, is it a custom in Germany?
A custom at least at our school.
I also remember talk of the whole class of that year throwing it all on a big pile in front of the school and setting it ablaze.
I’m not really sentimental. I didn’t keep anything.
There’s only two things I still have from past school projects. One is a box with insects pinned inside with their names and info I did for biology class last year. It was kinda creepy when I started it but by the time I was done it turned out to be pretty nice, Oh and I aced my final exam in biology class. The other is a water painting of a scenic landscape that my mom still has hanging in the hallway :) I love biology and art.
Yeah, I have a lot of my school work, and my non-school creative projects (mostly games) from my past, and looking at it tends to bring me back, though I also have good memories of most of it. But looking at it shows me what I actually wrote and drew, and how, and reminds me of my mindset and feelings then.
There’s a hilarious envelope from early grade school full of assignments from all the other students in my class, saying what they liked and/or admired about me . . . an assignment we all had to do for I think every other classmate. Many of them say I’m nice and smart, but by far the most common comment is how “good at soccer” I was . . . which seemed odd for a second (I didn’t remember being good at soccer), until I remembered both that was the most popular game at recess, and that the teacher had demonstrated the lesson by asking a few students to do it in front of the class, and the class had quickly realized that everyone could claim that what they liked about everyone else was that they were “good at soccer” as a way to get through the assignment quickly when they couldn’t think of anything else to write!
In school I was the project.
Now when I look at the results I think “You should have hired a tutor”.
This was one box with some of my stuff and my dad had his own things in there too, like some of his old notebooks. I didn’t know it existed until my dad showed it to me the other day. It’s a few assignments out of the hundreds I did over 15 years of schooling (I’m including nursery school).
In my own house I have a few reports I did in college, my 1st grade poem that was published in the paper, some photos from school, a couple of my yearbooks, and a shoe box of letters and cards that have nothing to do with school.
That doesn’t seem like very much to me. In one way I wish I had kept a few more things, and I wish I had looked at them more often.
The covers of my book reports were like artwork. I didn’t remember that until my dad showed them to me.
I think it felt a little like a loss. That little girl has disappeared and almost forgotten.
About 12 years ago I met my father’s cousin. My family had no idea she existed before that. I found her on Facebook. It only happened because my dad’s mother’s maiden name is so rare. Luckily, she had put her maiden name and not just her married name. When I met her she gave me photos of my dad as a boy with some of the other relatives, and I burst into tears when I first set my eyes on them in the restaurant.
I’ve burned my books, and book bag, on the new year’s eve fire, after I graduated (similar, in a way, to @ragingloli).
Believe it was a kind of ritual in my time/city/school?
I do have some notebook and stuff, but I don’t get emotional over it, when I see or read them.
That was once.
I live as little as I can in the past.
As much as I can right this moment.
No they me happy that those days are long over.
My parents moved overseas when I was in my sophomore year of college. Everything I had saved other than my SAT scores was trashed.
My ex’s mom passed two years ago, after living in the same house for 55 years. My ex’s childhood bedroom still had all her stuff from growing up (Barbie’s, school projects, report cards). It was interesting to look through as we loaded into a garbage can, not beyond that. It is way too old to provide insight to oneself.
@JLeslie I wish I could give your last post more than one GA. I feel your heartache and loss. {hug}
Yes, I get emotional when looking at my old schoolwork. I think back on that little girl and have so many wishes for her. Mostly I wish I could just hold her, rock her, tell her she’s ok just the way she is.
<shrugs> I’m an emotional person. People who aren’t can’t possibly ‘get it’, but now and then I run into someone like me…and it makes me feel normal. Thanks for that. 8)
^^Thanks for the article. The feelings are surprising to me. I am not very sentimental nor very nostalgic. At least I’m not that way in any sort of regular or daily way. I don’t have photos of family and events all over my house, I don’t think we had any photos on the walls or in frames growing up. It’s when I take a moment to look at or think about the past that I get hit with emotions, but it’s on rare occasion.
Yeah, my mom has all that stuff in the garage somewhere. I’m glad she kept it. Going through it does tend to make me a bit emotional. Though more so with stuff that wasn’t made at school, but drawings I did as a kid, mother’s day cards I made, things I made at home. Recently we found a box in a closet that contained stuff I made around 1997–2000 that I haven’t seen since those years. One of them was a book I made (from stapling several sheets of note paper together) called “The Animal Book” which had drawings of and brief, sometimes poorly-spelled, descriptions of various animals. On the cover it said “ilustrated [sic] by [my name], pictures by [my name]” and I was like “d’awww” :D
My college senior project was a Mini Baja offroad vehicle. When I see pics from that I have happy thoughts. Senior year on college was good for me.
^^ Yes, thanks for the article. Like @JLeslie, I don’t have pics of my family around, not one. When I take the time to think about an event, I get sentimental, but for the most part I don’t think about the past on purpose. I may get nostalgic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I like it.
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