Sorry for the length of my post!
I had a teacher who as well as being quite creepy was also very unpleasant to me. I have ND and some learning difficulties but I'm also quite intelligent, so back in the late 90s when I was in school I just had a reputation for pissing about, not actually trying when I really was.
This teacher would keep me behind 5 times a week, sometimes for reasons he's made up. (First lesson he accused me of chewing gum and I wasn't, so he demanded to smell my breath which was still minty from brushing my teeth roughly 20 minutes earlier but he kept me in anyway, lots of keeping me late so I'd miss the bus etc)
Anyway I was quite shy and didn't really talk and this big booming bastard would scream in my face if I didn't know an answer how I was never going to amount to anything and how I'd never "even stack a shelf". I would be told this minimum 5 times a week.
I left school at 14 with no quals, but I got a job and I even did additional work in a kitchen, including stock rotation so technically shelf stacking. I then did some nvqs and at 20 was quite experienced, mature and had a senior role which paid me about 1600 a month back in 2006. So I got a really decent 100% mortgage and bought a beautiful house that the owners reduced by 36k, due to a sale fail.
It was quite a nice street, lovely houses and as I moved in a man and a dog walked past admiring the houses and he recognised me before I did him, my old teacher.
I was literally carrying in boxes of my babys things and he asked me quite surprised about how I'd managed to buy the house, I looked at him and said, which felt like Christmas, "I stacked enough shelves, sir". And just walked into my new home. If I could bottle that feeling, I'd give it to everyone, it's something we should all experience.
The house prices crashed a year later but by the time I sold they'd risen and I made a good bit of profit. I was very lucky and I'll never ever not be grateful I never thought stacking shelves or cleaning toilets or caring for the elderly was ever something to be ashamed of. Stacking shelves/wiping bums etc got me on the property ladder as a 20 year old single mum. 🤘🏻