Thread by @QiaochuYuan, in 7th grade i was "emergency expelled" for a weekhttps://twitter.com/SaraBWarf/status/1216915289385971713 i used [...]

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QiaochuYuan

in 7th grade i was "emergency expelled" for a week https://twitter.com/SaraBWarf/status/1216915289385971713">https://twitter.com/SaraBWarf...

https://twitter.com/SaraBWarf/status/1216915289385971713

i used to be a very angry kid and in 7th grade i

1) fashioned a "knife" out of a metal ruler, magnets, and construction paper and occasionally waved it at some 6th graders who pissed me off

2) brought a swiss army knife to school and waved it at my friend who had annoyed me

during 2) there was a girl in the room who got scared, told her parents, her parents told the school, and the school called a cop in to talk to me about 1) and 2)

they decided to expel me for a week while they investigated how much of a danger to the other students i posed

this was by far the most trouble i& #39;d ever gotten in. for context, i was in the gifted program and was one of the best students there. usually i& #39;d just get detention for talking too much in class. i was excitable but not in any way a delinquent

i don& #39;t remember much about this part but i think my parents were too worried about what would happen to me to even be mad at me which was a first. the whole thing was very surreal, i couldn& #39;t really take in that it was happening

it was the first time i really thought deliberately about what effects my actions were having on the people around me and whether i wanted to change. i was scaring the other kids, and i realized i didn& #39;t want that. so i decided to stop being angry and start being friendly

and it *worked*. in 8th grade i started talking to girls for the first time (i& #39;d heard you were supposed to listen to their feelings and let them talk a lot and i did and it worked), a girl told me she liked me for the first time (i was *over the moon*), i made lots of friends

and, deciding to stuff down my anger came at a cost. it would explode out about once a year. i& #39;ve only just in the last few months started reclaiming and reintegrating it. turns out anger& #39;s really important!

there& #39;s also a lesson i learned from that experience that i didn& #39;t even realize explicitly until literally yesterday - i learned that to get girls to like me i had to pretend to be someone else. that& #39;s cost me a lot. still unraveling this one

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