Why I hated school

Hey, and welcome to today's video. Today

I'm filming in the kitchen and I'm using

my kitchen's ventilation fan light as a

lighting source. It's pretty cool, isn't

it? It's always good to try new things,

especially when it comes to making videos

on YouTube. I'm actually feeling a little

bit depressed today, but I'm going to try

my best to pretend to be Upbeat and

energetic. So today I want to talk

about bullying, how it affected me, how it

changed me and made me into the person I

am today. And I also want to talk about

just— I just want to talk about the

experience and what it's like being

bullied. Now I know I made a video about

bullying last year,

but I decided to take it down and delete

it because I just wasn't very happy with

it. It wasn't a very good video. It just

wasn't a very good video, and I want good

videos that I feel proud of, that I can

feel satisfied with on my channel. So I'm

going to remake the bullying video today.

Hopefully it'll be better. Hopefully, um,

it would be helpful to some people who are

also going through the same thing. So

where do we begin? Well, let's begin

straight from the beginning when Daniel

was a very young boy between the ages of 6

to 10. He was actually a fairly normal

kid. He had He had many friends. He

enjoyed making a fool of himself to

entertain his friends. He didn't have any

of these social anxiety problems. He

wasn't shy. He didn't have any problems

talking to people. He was a fairly regular

kid. And I guess things started to

drastically go downhill when he, when he

reached the age of 11 and moved to

Swedland School. I actually went

to 2 secondary schools. The first one was

the Cornwallis, and I loved the

Cornwallis. It was great. I had all of my

friends, my old friends from primary

school there. I felt safe, I felt secure,

I felt comfortable. I even looked forward

to going to school every day. And yeah,

I liked it at the Cornwallis, but

unfortunately around 1999 when I was 11,

my grandfather passed away and my dad

decided that we should move into his

house. So we had to move from Sutton

Valence to Harrietsham And unfortunately,

Harrietsham is quite far away from

Cornwallis. It's on the other side, and it

was too far away for my mum to take me to

school every morning. So my dad decided to

move me into Swaeland School,

which is a terrible school. I don't know

if things have gotten any better. I

wouldn't be surprised if it's still a

terrible school. And I think

the reason why it's such a terrible school

is It's just in a bad area. It's a rough

area. Lenham, a lot of factories in

Lenham. A lot of the families, a lot of

the people who live in Lenham are

low-class, working-class, rough people who

work in the factories. And the kids are

rough, mean bullies who enjoyed

tormenting me as a new kid at Swadlins. I

didn't know anyone. I had no friends. The

entire place was completely alien to me.

I was ripe for the picking for these

rough, mean hooligan kids to,

to prey on, to bully. Straight from the

very beginning, straight from day one, I

started to get bullied. And the main

things they bullied me about were my

physical appearance, the way I looked

Asian. And because Lenham is majority

white, 99% white people, it's not really a

very multiracial community, um, I stuck

out like a sore thumb. And that's just

what it's like being mixed race. Anywhere

you go, you stick out like a sore thumb.

In England, I look Asian. In Asia, I don't

look completely Asian, but that's, that's

a topic for a different video. The

problems of being mixed race: everywhere

you go, you look like a freak. Good luck

trying to fit in anywhere when you're

mixed because everyone will look different

to you no matter where you go. So the kids

at Swadlins were just constantly making

fun of how I looked. They would make fun

of my eyes. They used to say my eyes

looked like bananas. They used to tell me

things like— I don't know if I want to say

them because I don't want to get in

trouble on YouTube. Let's just say I

received a lot of racial abuse, a lot of

racial slurs. Because I look

Asian. I was the only Asian kid in the

entire school. There was one Black kid and

there was one Indian kid, but apart from

those two, I was the, the only

Asian-looking kid and everyone else were

white. So I always felt like I didn't fit

in. I always felt like I wasn't part of

the community or part of the group. I

always felt like I was an outsider who

wasn't welcome, and the kids at Swadlins

did their very best to make me feel

unwelcome and to make me feel like I

didn't belong here in, in my own country.

So how badly was I bullied? Well, I

received abuse, verbal abuse, pretty much

every day on a daily basis. But honestly,

I didn't really receive any physical

abuse. The, the only time I physically got

bullied was this one time when it was

snowing A group of 4 kids picked me up by

my feet and by my hands, and they carried

me over into the field where there was

snow, and they dragged me around by my

ankles through the snow. That was the only

time I got physically attacked or

assaulted. Most of the time it's just,

you know, pretty harmless stuff like being

slapped on the back of the head or having

people trip me up from behind. They would

kick— kick your ankle so you trip up.

Over your own feet when you're walking.

Um, but yeah, I was never really punched

or assaulted physically. Most of the time

it was just verbal abuse. And I know a lot

of people are going to say stuff like,

oh, that's nothing. When I was a kid, I

used to get beaten up and I used to get

punched in the face and gangs of kids

would jump on me and then beat me to a

bloody pulp. Daniel, stop whining. You

only had some verbal abuse. Yeah, okay, I

get it. A lot of people probably had it

worse than I did. But that doesn't

invalidate my own experiences. Doesn't

mean the things that happened to me don't—

didn't affect me in some way. There's

always going to be someone who had it

worse. There's probably people who had it

worse than the people who are saying that

they had it worse than me. I hate it when

people say, oh, you shouldn't complain

because a bunch of other people probably

had it worse than you. No, just because

some people had it worse than me doesn't

take away my right to complain about

something. And as the years went by, I

started to hate the kids and people more

and more. I didn't want to be their

friends. I didn't want to talk to them. I

hated them, and they could probably sense

how much I hated them. I was really

grumpy, miserable. I looked really

unfriendly. I didn't make any effort to

talk to anyone. I probably came across as

extremely stuck up. And this just made

the bullying worse. They just made— they

just— it just made me more unlikable as a

person. It just made it easier for them to

hate me, and it became a trendy thing

to bully me. People who bullied me were

seen as cool or funny,

and if you were my friend or if you were

seen being nice to me, then you would be

known— you'd be seen as someone who's

uncool, and you would also get bullied.

So people didn't even want to be my friend

because they didn't want to be associated

with me because they didn't want to get

bullied as well. I remember I had a friend

called Jay, and you might remember him

because I made a video about him.

Unfortunately, the video got a community

strike because I filmed a cockroach

crawling around, lying on its back with

its legs wiggling, And that was enough to

get me a community strike and the video

got taken down. Anyway, I had this friend

called Jay and I started to notice him

trying to distance himself away from me

because he didn't want to be associated

with me. He didn't want to be bullied as

well. He didn't want to be seen with me,

the uncool kid. And he started hanging out

with the other cool kids that I hated.

And I felt so betrayed that he started

distancing himself. He stopped sitting

next to me. He started sitting with the

irritating kids who I actually hated. And

I just hated school so much. It was

horrible. I hated waking up in the

morning. I hated getting ready. I dreaded

going back there every single day. It was

a horrible experience, and it just felt

like a nightmare. I felt so

alone. I felt so isolated. I felt like I

had no allies. I had no friends. No one

understood me. No one cared. People just

wanted to make fun of me and tease me.

They would make fun of how quiet I was

because I never spoke to anyone. They kept

making fun of how I didn't speak and how

quiet I was, and they would give me

nicknames like Motormouth or Chatterbox.

The reason why I didn't talk to anyone was

because I didn't like anyone. Didn't like

any of the kids at Swadlins. I hated them.

It wasn't until the last year of school

until I started to actually make friends,

and I actually managed to make a nice

little group of friends nearing the last

year of school, and that's around the time

when the bullying stopped. I think when

people realized that I had my own friends,

I found my own own social group,

they stopped picking on me. I guess it was

harder to pick on me when I was part of a

group. When I was a loner and had no

friends, I guess it was easy to single me

out. I was an easy target. You know,

there's always safety. They always say

there's safety in numbers, and it's true.

When you're in a group and

you're accepted by a group and you have

friends you become less of a target for

bullies because you have people who could

back you up, who could protect you. You

become less of a target, basically. And

after I made friends, I actually started

to enjoy school. I started to look forward

to going to school. I was less miserable.

I was— I guess I appeared more friendly,

and that also helped towards getting

bullied less. Unfortunately, that was the

last year of school And I never saw any of

those people ever again. So I guess the

lesson is, if you're being bullied, the

best thing to do is try and make friends.

Try and get a group of friends who can

back you up, who'll be on your side, who

will help you be less of a target.

And I guess I wish I knew that earlier.

If I made friends a year earlier, 2 years

earlier, then going to school would have

been less of a nightmare, and maybe I

would have enjoyed it more. Maybe I would

have taken my studies more seriously.

Maybe I would have done something

more interesting with my life. I remember

when I first started telling my dad about

my experiences being bullied. It wasn't

until my early 20s until I finally opened

up about my experience being bullied,

because when I was a kid and when it was

happening, I felt kind of embarrassed by

it. I didn't want anyone to know about how

I was being bullied. I felt ashamed by

it, and I tried my best to keep it a

secret. I didn't want my family to know,

and my dad was surprised. He said he was

really shocked to find out that I was

bullied so much, and he had no idea.

And he said he wished that I told him

because then he would have done something

about it. He would have moved me to a

Um, that the reason I didn't tell you was

because I was ashamed and embarrassed.

And I said, it wouldn't have mattered if

you moved me to a different school. If you

moved me to a different school, the same

thing would have happened. Maybe if I put

more effort into being likable, being

friendly, maybe if I put more effort into

talking to people and trying to make

friends, then I wouldn't have been seen as

a loser. The other kids wouldn't think

that I was a weirdo, and maybe I would

have been bullied less. Maybe I would have

had a better school experience. But

unfortunately, we can't go back in time.

What's done is done, and I

guess I just have to forget about it and

move on with my life.