Oh boy, this is going to be a long story.
TLDR: I’m a Senior and I messed up last year’s grades and everything, also due to some stuff, I’m stuck with 2 PE classes this year. I do not want to take it. What do I do? My counselor is not willing to drop those because she has to keep me in those classes to be eligible for graduation and she doesn’t want to be negligent (which is understandable).
Long story: I’ve always hated PE. I avoid PE any chance I get. In middle school, I switched out PE to a Music class (even going behind my counselor’s back and switching it with another one because my regular counselor wouldn’t do it for me).
Even in 9th grade, when everyone is supposed to have a PE class, I avoided it and (again), switched it to a Music class because I didn’t want to have to do anything with PE. I’ve avoided it in 10th grade as well (also because I had no space in my schedule for PE). In 11th grade, I had PE. And I stuck with the first couple of months because 1) it’s mandatory, 2) It’s helping me lose weight, 3) I thought that there was really no other option. I’m in California, which requires you to have 2 years of PE, and in my district (or school, at the very least), swimming is a requirement. So… la di da all the way until November of last year, my teacher says that we’ll be starting the swimming unit after the break. I begin to sweat bricks because this is absolutely horrifying. I want nothing to do with swimming.
After the break, the class begins the swimming unit. It’s the first day and I’m absolutely horrified and terrified. I even mistook a teacher’s instruction and jumped on the wrong side of the pool. (Yes, the deep end. And I have absolutely no experience swimming, let alone being near a pool), Luckily, I didn’t die but now that I reflect on it–it’s absolutely horrifying and traumatizing. But as the hour goes on and I’m listening to the teacher’s instruction, he wanted us to swim (or at least try to) from one side to the other side on the non-deep end (I don’t know what you call it) as a warm up. I pretty much walk myself back and forth and fail miserably (seriously, I was the worst). We then continue on and we have to begin doing that stroke motion in the water, propelling yourself forward. I, of course, fail miserably and look like an animal who has no idea what to do because I’m a literal mess. And then we did that warm up again. I’ve forced my head under water to get past those floating thingies in the pool enough times for that sound that you get when you dunk your head in the water to be traumatizing. Now, every time I watch a TV show, or video or anything about a pool, I cringe really hard and it gives me flashbacks to my one hour (less, even) in the pool and it gets even worse if I hear that “dunking” sound. I sometimes wonder if it’s a form of PTSD.
After that day. I chose to stop swimming. I refused to swim. Luckily, it was raining so I just used that as an excuse (also, I said I “forgot” to bring my swimwear stuff). I did that for a couple of days. Until maybe 3 days later, my teacher asked me about my current situation. I kind of dodged all of his questions and he basically said you won’t be able to graduate. In my mind, I just shrugged it off. The next day, he came up to me and asked me to call my parents. Well, this didn’t worry me that much since my parents already know about my situation but nonetheless still awkward as hell and horrifying for others to watch me as I call my parents and translate back and forth. The next day, I swam. I kind of got a praise from my teacher but I still absolutely hated the pool. Horrifying experience. The salty chlorinated water, the dunking sound… again…, completely losing track of what’s going on. It’s horrifying. I hate it. He even gave me a 1:1 lesson towards the end of the class (with everyone who didn’t swim (which was a lot since it was a minimum day) looking at me, of course because we were the only two at the pool since everyone left to clean themselves off). Luckily, the next day we had a storm and the schools closed (first time ever in recent times, actually). But the next day, I just stopped going to PE. I did this for the longest time. My parents became worried, everyone was basically losing their minds (not really).
I was desperately trying to find to get out of PE. But I found this thing called the CHSPE. And I’ve decided that this is the best option for me. (Note, that this is after a couple of /months/ of skipping this class, which has hurt my other classes as well along with a truck load of stress, anger, and things being hurled). Of course, my Dad was extremely reluctant. It didn’t take until about 5 months later (yes, towards the end of the school year) for him to agree to do it. But before I drag you that far out into the story; during that time: I was pushed into PE Rest, which is a class where you sit and do nothing and get PE credits (with doctor’s note), but my counselor did it for about half a semester for me probably because I was a special case and I was annoying the crap out of her (I know I probably made it sound like PE Rest sounds bad but I honestly would have preferred this over everything else, but my doctors are too proud about their job to bend the rules so I wasn’t kept in there for long), I was also pushed into therapy–to resolve “conflicts” with my Dad (which really only happens when it’s to talk about school, we’re perfectly fine if school is not a subject, we laugh and get along well). My Dad also got my PE class dropped, knowing that this would give me 2 PE classes next year. But I had little worry since I thought that I would be able to pass the CHSPE and get out of there and move onto a community college.
Fast forward to now. I’ve failed the Math portion of the CHSPE (I’m going to retake it in October). But until then, I’m stuck with 2 PE classes back-to-back (with little room to budge since my schedule doesn’t really permit), a counselor who is unwilling to drop it pending the CHSPE because she says “It would be negligent on my part to drop you from them until we know for sure you’ve passed your test.” which is understandable, about 12 more hours until school starts and a summer assignment that I have yet to start.
Please don’t judge.
*Apologies if the post doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, every time I bring up this subject, I get a little antsy.
***I’m expecting some comments to be about why I don’t just work on removing swimming instead of just dropping PE altogether. My reasoning behind dropping PE altogether is because I absolutely don’t want PE at all. The swimming unit was kind of a “the last straw” for me when it comes to PE.
