In middle school, we had some militaristic gym coaches. Youd think we were in boot camp or something? They have very specific rules that had to be followed to a T.
You had to wear briefs, no boxers allowed. If you did have boxers, you had to have briefs under them.
You had to wear the school gym uniform, no exceptions.
The provided shorts were super short, so you could also wear sweats, but you had to wear the shorts underneath them.
You had to have your shirt tucked in.
You had to form a line in your designated spot and wait on the playground for the class to start before the gym coaches would arrive to take attendance. This was in the SoCal heat.
During attendance, the coach would also inspect your uniform. Youd have to show the band of your briefs and shorts to show compliance with the rules.
You had to use the gym shower, no exceptions. God that was awful and awkward.
You break enough rules and youd collected "non-strips", like a demerit, which would earn you detention.
All that hubub and all we ever did was run laps on the field. We used the gym once or twice, but I cant even remember what we did. All the attendance, uniform crap, and shower took up most of the period.
Its no wonder I hated gym class and exercising after dealing with that shit. It wasnt till I hit my 30s that I realized I quite enjoyed working out and hiking.
Perhaps, but middle-schoolers genuinely stink to high heaven, especially after P/E. I think one can imagine more obvious/less conspiratorial reasons for showers being mandatory.
Yeah fuck gym class. I actually think it's super important for kids to be active but the way it's implemented, especially at the junior high and high school levels, is asinine. And your situation sucked, what a stupid amount of bullshit!
I was a habitual skipper of gym class from about grade 2 until I graduated high school. I'd only participate enough to get a D, and some marking periods I misjudged and got an F. The only times I didn't try to skip were when we had the weight room, because I actually liked that. But failing gym class had exactly zero impact on anything in my life. My dad gave me the whole "I'd be disappointed in you, but I've learned not to have expectations so you can't disappoint me" schpiel, which whatever, emotional manipulation was my parents' bread and butter, so I didn't really care. Other than that, no repercussions at all.
Yeah, I remember one of my teachers (I think my high school biology teacher) chastising us a bit one day because most of the class would come from PE before hers. She was complaining that we smelled like sweat and working out and all that.
But we weren't allowed (or given even close to enough time at the end of the PE class) to use the showers. You basically showed up, had until the second bell (about 5 minutes after the first) to be in the gym ready to go, you'd run/play/workout/whatever for almost an hour straight, and then be given at most 5 minutes to change and go to your next class.
No shit we stank, and when we asked why we couldn't use the showers, we were told there was no way for us to be monitored in there, so it left too many opportunities for misdeeds and shit.
Our showers were strange. It was basically a wide hallway with showerheads along both walls. And considering how strict my gym coach was, he'd have everything on a schedule and timed. So everyone would go to the locker room at the same time, get undressed and hit the shower at the same time. We had to have a towel wrapped around our waists. Then wed have to all wait at the showers exit for everyone to finish, and only then would we be released back into the locker room.
I always hated homework. It is the most ridiculous thing to me. The ultimate purpose of school is to prepare kids for life through education. The idea that anyone should spend 12+ years of their life learning to waste the majority of their day with someone(s) that has such terrible time management skills, to then go home and spend all your time on filler material and junk that does not matter, drove me nuts. It is training kids that they are worthless drones with no value or right to a life. If, as an adult, I work an 8 hour day on the clock, fuck you if you think I'm going home and doing more work off the clock. The vast majority of teachers never even attempt to manage their time objectively. Homework is not some overflow of their limited time allotment, but is some kind of institutionalized incompetence and they all do it. This is the most imbecilic nonsense I can imagine. Everyone learns differently, and some people may need this kind of reinforcement but all students should not be subjected to the limitations of the lowest common denominator. I could pass any test based solely on a teacher's lecture in class. I knew the material already, so spending an extra hour for every stupid teacher's nonsense homework was infuriating to no end.