The Summit

[shanlea]

Deborah: Thank you. Your post is what I've been looking for.  I'm at a point in my life where I am trying to find answers and am looking for helpful insight, not cynics and complainers.  I am getting my grad degree in education and I really want to help kids.  I learn best by example. The role playing scenario you described as not helpful was great as was the anti-social scenario.  Too bad society doesn't embrace this stuff.  Myself, I have a strange pull between feeling like its better to embrace and accept, and stop trying to fix or label kids, but also wanting to help kids with poor self esteem.  I've also got 2 small children I'm raising on my own and I don't want to repeat mistakes.  I also am just questionning a lot of conventional wisdom in parenting and seeing there is no black and white answers to everything.

PS: My 4 year old is in Montessori and it's been a real gift.

[mikehunt]

the dreams was one of the few that was tolerable... maybe because it was run by one of my favorite staff members.
i don't know; it was the most chill and i felt it had a purpose.. i mean, we all need our dreams to live.

[Anonymous]

If you have a good experience in any sense it's either because you have a positive outlook, a staff wasn't a total meany, or you experienced something important. That doesn't mean it worked. It means you were spared something and got something. what a bargain!

[mikehunt]

well, what was it supposed to do to work?
it working means that it accomplished its goal... i'm not sure what the goal was, probably to make some sort of change.  surely, we were all changed in one way or another (not necessarily in a positive way) after having experienced such events.  therefore, should my assumption be correct, it worked!

[Anonymous]

i went to CMS, i hated proheets and workshops.  I was made to go through the truth prohpeet 3 times!  i hated it.  the second time i got in there and just walked out. i walked around campus for about 45 minutes until they found me and forced me to walk back in.  this is when they started yelling at me.  it was crazy.  even my best friends were verbally attacking for "ruin there emotional work"  it was all bullshit.  when i found out i had to go through it a third time i flat out refused to get out of bed that morning.  i just slept in, that is until my team leader came and made me get up and go.  it was hell, and once again , i got ripped apart by my friends for " not stepping up, and being the older student they knew i could be"  all while the staff just sat back quietly probably chuckling to themselves.

[mikehunt]

On 2004-08-26 18:07:00, **PIXIE DUST** wrote:

"i believe that all the profeets and workshops are there to fuck with you... espically the imagine, i and me.  i didn't like the dreams either when you had to draw ur nightmere, and then they make you wear it and you have to stand up in front of everyone while staff point out every little fuckin thing you drew on there... then they make you rip it up and throw it away at the end.........

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid
of the dark. The real tragedy of life is
when men are afraid of the light.
--Plato

"

i don't think we did that part!!

[Anonymous]

I too remember that. I have yet to look through the notebooks to explore more about some of the moments. In fact, even in a theraputic environment like a shrink office I have resisted exploring the full extent of control over us in workshops such as the summit. For years I have adhered to the never-say-shit-promise I gave. I see now that it is out of financial protection for the school to do this. Stolen workshop. The chop shop chop shop. Over the last month or two I have been knowledgeable about the existance of this site I have already quickly flown the gammut of emotion. I want to fly away from it and not go straight in. 'At's funny to me because I go straight into every other conflict in my life. Action. I guess some of that originated with my CEDU "re-education". I need so badly to know that we're not alone in our assessments as grads. I feel guilty a bit stabbing CEDU in the back. And now I need to explore that in itself.

Thanks for being as longlastingly upset as me!

 ::bump::

[Lyn]

some of the other roles...  one of my friends was "peter pan". (the staff saw him as being irresponsible), and since peter pan lost his shadow... peter pan was "irresponsible"  (i was Miss. America because the staff thought that i didn't think i was "beautiful"... and everyone knows that Miss. America's are beautiful...)  some one else was "exlposive pooh", the staff thought.. (and so did i at times) she had anger problems, so her character was basically a phyco winne the pooh bear.  some one else was "King Author"  the staff thought he had trouble being a leader and to be a king you have to lead, so that's why he got that roll.  does that make sense?

for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.

--Thomas Jefferson

They cast me as Gwenaviere back in 1976.

[Anonymous]

I was GLENDA THE GOOD WITCH from the Wizard of Oz... and still to this day, I have no idea WHY?!

[cedu91to93]

I was Indiana Jane (instead of Jones). The whole thing was obnoxious in and of itself.

[try another castle]

I was annie oakley. Her apparently outrageous behavior and dirty jokes was supposed to be a stretch for me because I was such a doormat at the school. It made me chuckle to myself, even as a brainwashed older student, because I remember how outspoken and vulgar I used to be before I got there, and I pretty much went back to being that after I left, too.

So, just goes to show how "off base" they were. Oakley was *hardly* a stretch for me. I only had to go up to do my solo stretch once, and the minute I told the joke about life savers being better than men because they come in five different flavors, stacy spit out her water laughing, cranked up that stupid fame song and I didn't have to do it anymore.

I was also supposed to carry around a dead horse that I would kick and beat every so often, so they had that horsie on a stick as one of the supplied props you could dig up. I dragged that thing around by the reins for the whole party, and almost immediately into that exercise, his stick falls out. So I am walking around with a stuffed horse's head, and I'm swinging it around by the reins and smashing it into the floor, which actually felt quite good, since I just kept looking at the horse and thinking "This is RMA, this is RMA, this is RMA. Take that and that and that you stupid pus-filled cunthole of a school."

Even today, I think that is funny. What other place of extreme retardation would make you walk around and beat up on a horse's head?

The one thing that bothered me in the historical sense (because I am incredibly anal about this) is that I don't recall Annie Oakley being that outrageous personality-wise. She was a sharpshooter who actually dressed very femmy and ladylike, and to my knowledge, wasn't really a pistol herself. Now, if they had instead used Calamity Jane, that would make some sense. In fact, I had confused the two in the workshop and conflated them into one person.


I actually have all of the stretches written down in my notebook, because I was supposed to help with the costumes. So I have in detail what everyone was and what they had to do.

[dishdutyfugitive]

My stretch drives me nuts to this day. To me, the character thoroughly represents the erroneous 'diagnosis' and ill fated attempt that RMA (and my parents) attempted to treat me with. It absolutely conveys the message that, I'm weak just for being a confused child that survived a defcon 5 divorce.

Having me act  like a cartoon character in front of a group? - all the while I was in need of a very specific form of therapy for a very specific condition. Nothing more - nothing less.  You don't substitute a root canal for chemotherapy do you? When someone's nearsighted you give them glasses - you don't give them Jock itch cream.

 I had condition 'A' and what did RMA do? They gave me the farthest thing from the specific treatment for condition 'A'. Those fucking degenerate untrained staff were playing fantasy land therapy games with me. It's reminiscent of those Nazi doctors performing bizaro experiments purely for recreational & masturabotory purposes.

The fact that it was a big money making comedy to them is criminal.


Thinking about that right now pisses me off so much I feel like clubbing a baby seal.

[Anonymous]

i hate the me i became there, the me they trained me to be, and i am trying t not hate myself anymore.

but its hard, i have so much guilt for the way that i acted towards people there.  i hate everything i said, every time i just gave in and did what they wanted.  i feel like such a coward.

maybe thats why they gave me cowardly lion, maybe they saw just how much i could have done against them and did nothing, like you said, laughing at me, look how stupid she looks.

god those people were cruel.  what made them so cruel?  how did they get so crazy?  how do i avoid getting that crazy???