Anyone here ever attend special education?

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I went to a special school for K and 1st grade. I was mainstreamed into a normal elementary school for the first month or two of second grade. It didn't work out, I guess. My memories of that period are nil, other than the teacher's name, what she looked like, and singing "My Darling Clementine" one sunny afternoon. Then I was in Special Ed for grades 2 and 3.

During the third grade I would drop in for certain subjects in normal classrooms, sort of a preliminary mainstreaming. I was mainstreamed for fourth grade. Part of the reason was that school's special ed didn't go past the third grade. I did horribly at first but then I started doing stellar. I don't know what caused the turn-around, my memories of this period are shaky. Pretty soon I was at the top of the heap and they told me I'd one day go to an Ivy League college and all that jazz.

I went to junior high and started getting Cs and Ds. By 8th grade it was Ds and Fs. So when I started high school (9th grade) it was back to special ed, which aside from shop class I stayed in until I graduated.

The particular high school special ed I was in was special ed for bad kids. Like, individuals who had spent significant fractions of their short lives in some form of incarceration, but who were considered too messed up in the head to go to continuation school with all the other miscreants. There were a few 'conventional' special ed kids in the mix, and for the most part they were brutalized by the rest. I almost got my ass kicked the first week but then I made a few friends and everything was okay. Overall I got less sh*t from the 'worst of the worst' than I did from all the other kids at the high school. I wasn't bully bait, but there was a lot of sh*t to go around.

I just wanted to coast. I figured my future was fugged as it was, so I might as well take it easy in high school. For the most part, I did. Then I got into trade school after my case manager pulled some strings, and I freaked out and dropped out before the first week was up. I started out in junior college and soon discovered I was brilliant after all, that those years between grades 4 and 6 weren't a fluke after all. I transferred to a Cal State (which aren't as fancy as the UC schools) and then I went to grad school and... well, hell, here I am, unemployed and fearing that I am largely unemployable. But at least I'm edu-mah-cated!

Yes and it was a nightmare really didn't enjoy it at all.

Yes and I hated every minute of it. They eventually put me in the general populace because I was smarter than the combined total of the class( I am smarter than almost all neurotypicals)