I visited BiH after the war. Such a beautiful country, and the people were so warm and welcoming.

Thank you for reminding everyone here that MANY people have it much worse. Our kids will be fine!

Anonymous wrote:This is a great thread OP. Very few Americans have really experienced hardship. Both my parents had to end their educations in elementary school for financial reasons. My mother never continued, but my father went to get an associates degree after dropping out of school in Jamaica in 3rd grade! He went from having a 3rd grade education to an associates degree from a community college and had a productive 35-year career as a lab technician at a top university.

That's exactly why I posted this. We are a lot more resilient than we think. There is so much we can do to help our kids bridge this. There is no doubt in my mind some disadvantaged kids will fall behind and perhaps never catch up. That really sucks. However, they will have a chance at life at the end of this that they might not have if we open up prematurely. We need to start thinkinging now about how to bring those kids up to speed once this is over.

Thank you for doing this AMA.

How does what we're going through now compare to what you remember of living through years of war? Both in terms of day to day life - but also how you feel and cope emotionally?

Are you surprised how much we all seem to be falling apart, even with our relative (and pretty robust) comfort here?

Thank you for the levity. As a person who has also experienced great tragedy in my life, it is hard to read the endless sadness from people who think the world is ending. No, it's not great but life could be SO MUCH WORSE.

This is a great thread OP. Very few Americans have really experienced hardship. Both my parents had to end their educations in elementary school for financial reasons. My mother never continued, but my father went to get an associates degree after dropping out of school in Jamaica in 3rd grade! He went from having a 3rd grade education to an associates degree from a community college and had a productive 35-year career as a lab technician at a top university.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amazing story, OP. Good for you for getting through it so well.

I imagine kids in Europe during WWII had similar experiences. I saw pictures of kids in London going to school in the tunnels of the Tube during air raids. I imagine they were, in reality, barely learning anything.

I definitely have PTSD and major anxiety that I deal with every day, but from the outside a live a normal life.

Even if they held school, I don't think we would have learned much honestly. It's hard to think about anything but survival when they are bombing you 24/7.

At least our kids now do not have that.

Yes, absolutely. This is nothing like war, despite it needing a national, coordinated response.

Anonymous wrote:Amazing story, OP. Good for you for getting through it so well.

I imagine kids in Europe during WWII had similar experiences. I saw pictures of kids in London going to school in the tunnels of the Tube during air raids. I imagine they were, in reality, barely learning anything.

I definitely have PTSD and major anxiety that I deal with every day, but from the outside a live a normal life.

Even if they held school, I don't think we would have learned much honestly. It's hard to think about anything but survival when they are bombing you 24/7.

At least our kids now do not have that.

Amazing story, OP. Good for you for getting through it so well.

I imagine kids in Europe during WWII had similar experiences. I saw pictures of kids in London going to school in the tunnels of the Tube during air raids. I imagine they were, in reality, barely learning anything.

Anonymous wrote:How old were you when you got your degree?

This was Bosnia, I presume? Or Iraq?

Yes, Bosnia. I was a bit older. I worked for a few years after high school so I started college at 20.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. did you learn on your own? How did you make up that lost time?

Since we didn't have electricity for the majority of that time, I read A TON. Whatever I could get my hands on. Reading was my way of escaping reality.

The education I had prior to that was excellent, so when I came to the US for college, I had to take 1 remedial math class and some language courses (for obvious reasons), but after that, I had no trouble following along.

What I mean here was there was no TV or electronics to occupy my time. The only option was to read, really.

How old were you when you got your degree?

This was Bosnia, I presume? Or Iraq?

Anonymous wrote:Wow. did you learn on your own? How did you make up that lost time?

Since we didn't have electricity for the majority of that time, I read A TON. Whatever I could get my hands on. Reading was my way of escaping reality.

The education I had prior to that was excellent, so when I came to the US for college, I had to take 1 remedial math class and some language courses (for obvious reasons), but after that, I had no trouble following along.

Wow. did you learn on your own? How did you make up that lost time?

The war started when I was in 7th grade. We had no distance learning since there was no internet in my country in the early 90s. We tried for a while to meet with teachers occasionally in pods in people's homes, but that stopped because it became too dangerous for us to move around. There was also no electricity or running water in the city almost the entire time.

Fast forward to today, I have a degree from an American University (3.9 GPA), have a stable job, a family.

I'm posting this not to lecture anyone or shame anyone, but to hopefully comfort some of you who are panicking about kids not going back to school in person this fall.

Feel free to ask me whatever you want.